


whose brow is laid in thorn

by quantumoddity



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, Angst, Brainwashing, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Prince and his knight, Recovery, Reunions, Separations, Sex, Threats of Violence, Trans Male Character, Trans Mollymauk Tealeaf, Trans Pregnancy, Warning: Trent Ikithon, Well - Freeform, Whipping, and now, in chapter 6, like not in a sexy way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:20:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 49,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28203003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quantumoddity/pseuds/quantumoddity
Summary: Mollymauk has been waiting for this day since he was eighteen years old.Not the day he'll be crowned king, that day is a long way off and he's none too eager for it. No, today is the day the love of his life is returned to him, after they were separated when their affair was discovered.But Caleb Widogast has been in the hands of the Volstruker. And who is coming back is not the same man who left.So is that man still there?
Relationships: Mollymauk Tealeaf/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 49
Kudos: 222





	1. Chapter 1

Mollymauk didn’t wake up, not really. To say he woke up would have implied he’d ever slept and he didn’t so much as doze that night, not even for a moment. 

But when the dawn filtered under the thick curtains of his chambers and fell across the rich carpets, he did feel some sort of start. Though it wasn’t anything like waking up. 

It felt more like coming back to life.  _ He’s coming home.  _

He bolted upright, breath suddenly coming fast like he’d been sprinting. His mouth dried and the sudden need to move and move quickly crackled through his nerves, though he had no idea what to do with any of it. 

Clothes. He’d start with that, seeing as he was completely naked save the silk sheets and his tattoos. Normally he’d wait for his sister, to get ready with her, but Jester really liked to sleep in and he'd always felt mean waking her up before the sun had cleared the horizon. Unless it was him doing it by repeatedly smashing a goosefeather pillow into her face. 

And he needed some time to himself this morning.  _ He’s coming home.  _

He lit the candles then looked through his vast wardrobe, normally grabbing the first thing he came across whether it was appropriate for court or not. People had long since given up on expecting him to be appropriate, full stop. His fathers senechal didn’t even roll her eyes as much when he would come to take his seat, dressed in feathers and sequins with far too much of his deep violet skin on display. Mollymauk actually suspected his father had turned it into a play, to further intimidate his already plenty intimidated supplicants. 

But this morning his fingers passed over the usual silks, satins and samites. He couldn’t help but think of how he’d dressed back then, gods, ten years ago now. His fingers kept moving, further and further back into the racks, as if he could go back in time so easily. As if everything could be undone. As if he could be the Mollymauk he’d been back then just by dressing like him. 

His chest clenched tightly.  _ He’s coming home.  _

Eventually he found a close fitting tunic with a high neck, in a dark blue colour, clearly from some time before it was politically necessary for him to be wearing the house colours at all times. Soft doeskin breeches underneath, no jewellery save what he always wore in his horns. Just some kohl outlining his full, red eyes. He wanted to look as much like the Mollymauk he would remember as possible, whether it would change anything or not. 

When the heavy knock on his chamber door came and it swung back with an iron and oak creak, Molly wasn’t surprised to see Yasha standing there, already dressed and ready to go and also very much not surprised to see him in the same state. Yasha had always understood him in that way. 

“Your highness,” she said in that soft voice of hers, bending in a small half bow.

None of his other friends ever used his official titles outside of the courtroom but, after years as his aide de camp, she had turned them into a term of endearment. Hearing her say it gave him a reason to smile, in the middle of everything he was feeling. 

“Good morning, Yasha,” he beckoned her in from where he sat at his dressing table, still looking at himself in the mirror. 

“I checked with the night guard, your highness. All clear, nothing to report,” she intoned, as she did every morning before anything else was addressed. 

“Good,” Molly murmured, attention elsewhere, “I, uh, take it my mother and father are still abed?”

“Soundly, your highness.”

Molly nodded tightly to his reflection. He didn’t want the king here for this. The less bad memories were waiting for him on the palace steps, the better. 

_ Then why do you imagine he’ll want you there?  _ A nasty little voice whispered inside his mind, making him clench his hands into fists. Molly swallowed hard and pushed it away, trying to wipe any trace of it off his face before Yasha could see it in the mirror.

He either hadn’t moved fast enough or their friendship ran too deep. He saw his friend’s face tighten ever so slightly, felt her hand rest on his shoulder and squeeze firmly. 

“Are you ready for this, your highness?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper. It was wise to never speak too loudly anywhere in this castle, not even in the bedchamber of it’s crown prince. Molly had learned that lesson early in life. 

But still not early enough. 

“I am,” he made himself meet Yasha’s eyes, or at least the reflection of them, “He’s coming home. He’s finally coming home. And everything’s going to be right again.”

If there was a flicker of doubt in his friend’s ash-ringed eyes, then Mollymauk didn’t see it. Instead he looked into his own face, bathed in candlelight and dawn, so he could see the certainty there and forget he’d forged it himself out of dreams and selective memories. So he could make himself believe it when he whispered it once more.

Caleb Widogast was coming home and everything would be right again. 

People in the castle whispered about it, of course they did. But it just joined the never ending current of gossip and low level scandal that ran through the place because of the wayward crown prince. Caleb had become another faceless body in their prince’s bed, of the hundreds they imagined crowded in there like a tavern on a festival night. Earlier on than most, granted, but every bit as transient. 

And even then Mollymauk still wasn’t the most interesting member of the royal family. Just the safest to gossip about. 

It would make Mollymauk laugh bitterly, to imagine their faces if they’d only known. Caleb hadn’t been one of many. He’d been the first. He’d been everything. 

They were called the Volstrucker, their true purpose shrouded by naming them in a language few people this side of the Xorhasian border spoke. For the few that could be openly seen at court, people had grown used to them and long ago grown bored of making up stories about them. They’d stopped questioning Sorah’s never ending vigil at the king’s side, the higher courtiers that were granted peeks behind the curtain thought little of the people in black who hid their faces and brought reports under magical seals that the king would read and then promptly burn. To them, Trent Ikithon was just another courtier, a noble chased from the Empire and trying to scratch some semblance of the power he’d once wielded through the benevolence of the king, clearly providing him some service they had better not dwell on too long. 

Bodyguards, spies, personal assassins, fallen sorcerers with their uses, all these things were common in this court and drew little attention when no threads could be found between them all.

And when the crown prince was given a companion at the age of ten, a thin, pale boy with dark red hair and sharp blue eyes, the court accepted it when they were told he was just that. A companion. A personal guard. Hardly unusual, given that this was their heir to the throne. It was only natural that he would have his own version of his father’s silent, hulking goliath and it was rather smart, after all, to have the two boys grow alongside each other to strengthen the bond between them. 

But of course, that was exactly the point of the Volstrucker. To blend into the background, to repel whispers and speculation as easily as shaking rainwater off a cloak, to run beneath the surface of things. It was what allowed them to operate as the most vicious, effective and brutal assassins and war mages anyone inside or outside of the Empire had ever seen. To be the stuff of legends and nightmares while never appearing so. 

That was Caleb Widogast. Prince Mollymauk’s own personal Volstruker, the kind of privilege only extended to the most powerful people. And of course, those most powerful people who had close ties to their handler. Trained from their shared youth to give his life in service of his prince, to jump before every blade aimed at his neck, to either slaughter the enemy or take the sword point through his own flesh. Drilled in the most dangerous offensive magic, shaped by Ikithon’s hand out of common dirt to serve a greater purpose, to once day stand by the throne when it was Mollymauk’s turn to sit it or to perish getting him there. 

That was who Caleb was. Or at least what he’d been intended as. 

“An hour after dawn. That was what they said.”

Molly was pacing back and forth across his room, hands fidgeting with the adornments in his horns. Yasha sat patiently on his bed, again demonstrating how she could be such a stickler for protocol in some areas and then completely disregard it in others. Their long friendship always had been that strange kind of patchwork. 

“They did say that, your highness,” she agreed patiently, for the tenth time that morning. 

“So how long does it take to travel from this place?” the panic began rising on his throat, “This place they won’t even bloody tell me where it is? Because it damn far past an hour after dawn!” 

Yasha took a deep, patient breath, one of many that she’d taken between coming into her prince’s room and this moment, “The roads have been dangerous of late. Perhaps they’ve just been delayed. Perhaps there was rain over the mountains. Perhaps a tree fell across the king’s road. Perhaps a million other things happened that we do not need to be worrying ourselves over right now.” 

Molly flushed, folding his arms across his chest and staring sullenly at his boots, “There’s probably a few we should be worrying about…”

“Molly, think who he’s with. Is there really anything that would stop a pack of Volstreker for very long?”

“He...he was just never late,” Molly replied after a long, long pause, his voice sounding very far away and very young, “That was one of the things he hated most, being late.”

He wasn’t looking but he heard how his friend’s voice became very clipped and careful, her accent coming through stronger like it did when she was minding her words very closely, “My prince...Caleb may not be the friend we remember…”

Molly looked up sharply, his eyes bright and hard like rubies, “Caleb was not just my friend. Caleb was the love of my life. He  _ is  _ the love of my life. We’re soulmates.”

Yasha sighed again, though this one she kept to herself. Arguing with Mollymauk was a chore most of the time, nigh on impossible when he got that fire in his eyes, the same fire that could be seen in the king’s more and more frequently. 

The fire that worried her every time she saw it reflected on her friend’s face. 

So Yasha wouldn’t argue with him. She would do what she had always done, what she’d learned how to do when she’d been handed this broken boy at the age of eighteen and helped him put himself back together over ten long years, what people were afraid to do for a prince but gods did he need it. She would pull back his armour and show him what was underneath. 

“Molly,” she stood, taking a few steps towards him, her sad eyes catching the candlelight, “What happened was not your fault.”

It was like watching a single crack in a sheet of ice bring a whole glacier face crumbling down. Yasha moved quickly, bringing Molly into her arms before he could even choke out a sob, as the tears he’d probably needed to cry since he’d heard Caleb was coming home burst forth. 

For a moment, as her knees hit the thick carpet, it was as it had been ten years ago. Those long, awful months after Caleb had been taken away, when Molly couldn’t find the strength to rise from his bed, when the chambermaid Veth would bring him meals he wouldn’t eat, when Jester would come ask her big brother to play with her and it would be like she wasn’t there, when no good natured threats from Beau would get him down to the practise yard, when Fjord would come with tales of his travels and get no response. Caduceus, the palace healer, had done all he could for him, eventually only able to bow his head and sigh and say it wasn’t for any medicine to cure the nasty shock of a broken heart. The king had known better than to try and reach out to his son, knowing this had driven a chasm between them that would not be repaired. The queen had sat outside his chamber door for days on end, waiting until he would see her again. 

Ikithon said Caleb had been taken for training. Re-education. The screaming nightmares that would bring Yasha and Jester running to Molly’s chambers at all hours proved just how much they believed that.

But Yasha squared her shoulders and let Molly weep against her. It wasn’t like that any more. Her prince had grown stronger since then, and wiser, this was just the aftershocks of an earthquake that had passed. He’d learned not to shut his friends out. 

He proved that when he finally whispered, voice trembling, “But what if he blames me?”

Yasha squeezes his shoulders gently, “Think of the Caleb you knew. How well you understood each other. How clever he was. Do you really think he’d blame you?”

“No…” Molly drew back with a final sigh that sounded something like relief, “No he wouldn’t.” 

“You know who's to blame,” Yasha’s voice hardened at the edges.

Molly’s mouth twisted, the way it often did when thoughts of that man strayed through his mind, Having him so close for the last ten years, seeing his smug smile and cruel eyes every day at court, at every royal banquet, in the council chambers, it had taken all of the combined efforts of his friends to convince him the matter couldn’t be settled with the point of his scimitars. 

Not without angering the king. And despite everything Mollymauk said, despite the mask he wore, he was terrified of the king. He couldn’t hate him, not truly, not even after he ordered your heart torn in two and one half banished to gods knew where. Not even after everything he’d seen him do, the executions he’d ordered, the other kingdoms he’d seen him raze in war, watching from behind what little protection his mother could offer him. And even beyond the things he’d seen him do lurked the things he suspected. 

But you couldn’t hate the man who’d saved your life. Who’d found you as an orphan and adopted you, named you heir to his kingdom, gave you a family and a name and a crown. Who had shown you love, perhaps, once upon a time. 

Fear was easier. And so Mollymauk feared his father. 

“I don’t want to think about that right now,” the tiefling rubbed at his eyes, smudging kohl across the bridge of his nose, “I just want to see him. I need to know he’s okay.”

Yasha opened her mouth, about to say something comforting while still trying to manage her prince’s expectations, when there came shouts from the far side of the bailey. From the main gate. Riders approaching. 

Molly stiffened, eyes opening wide, lighting up with more hope than Yasha had seen on his face in years, so much so that she couldn’t help but smile. 

“He’s home,” Mollymauk breathed. 

The clamour raised by the approaching visitors must have woken Jester. As Mollymauk stood in the audience chamber, smoothly maintaining his princely face, she came bursting through the side door, clearly having dressed in a hurry. She ran up to take her place at his side, panting and grinning, eyes sparkling with excitement. 

“Is he here yet? Is he here?” she gasped, taking her brother’s hand and squeezing tight. 

Molly chuckled fondly, dropping the act for the moment and winding an arm around her in a hug. He could never maintain it around Jester. 

“Not yet. They’re just dismounting in the foreyard, we don’t even know if it's them yet…”

“Oh of course it is!” Jester rolled her eyes before the splitting grin came back, “I can’t believe he’s here, we’re all together again. It’ll be just like it was before!”

Molly couldn’t hide his own delight, not when her’s was taking it by the hand and tugging it up to the surface. But he needed to wear the right face for this, settling for laughing and scrubbing her blue hair quickly before pushing her away. 

“Come now, at least try and look suitably intimidating,” he teased, moving back to standing tall with his hands clasped at the small of his back to put the hilts of his infamous scimitars on show, “The king would be most disappointed if any of our visitors left with dry smallclothes.” 

“That’s not my job,” Jester snorted, like he were the world’s biggest fool rather than her future liege, “My job is to stand and look dumb and pretty to get them off their guard.”

Molly nudged her with a sharp elbow which she mostly dodged, “And brain them with a psychic lollipop if I lose my swords.”

“And brain them with a psychic lollipop if you lose your swords!” she repeated cheerily, giving him a wink before her face settled into something softer, something not unlike the look Yasha had given him as she’d helped him to his feet, “I’m really happy for you, Molly.”

Molly had his eyes facing firmly forward, he could hear voices from behind the gilded doors or the audience chamber. But the corner of his mouth turned up and the tension in his shoulders lessened slightly. 

He was glad to have his sister beside him for this. 

Because the door was opening and the man he loved, the man he’d loved since he was a child, the man whose absence had ripped a hole inside him he thought would never heal, was about to walk through the door. 

Ikithon first, flanked by two nondescript figures in all black, a man and a woman. Molly greeted them with a stiff nod, his heart set on what lay behind them. A cloaked figure, hood up, the same stiff black uniform as the other two. 

“Ah, Prince Mollymauk,” Ikithon intoned, voice as slippery as ever, “A welcome sight at the end of a long journey. It was my pleasure, of course, to bring your personal Volstruker back to you. Consider it yet another token of my sincere and genuine apology for the…  _ unpleasantness _ he caused ten years ago.” 

His voice lingered over that word, drawing it out into something sharp edged. Because of course he knew. Jester glanced anxiously at her brother. 

Molly’s anger bubbled too close to the surface, he had to force the words through his teeth in a thin veneer of politeness, “You have the throne’s thanks, Archmage, as ever. Of course, I would be loath to keep you any longer, after such an arduous journey. You and your companions are dismissed to refresh yourselves. Immediately.”

He was rewarded by the slightest curling of Ikithon’s lip at his old title, the reminder of the one he used to own before he was cast out of the empire for his crimes. The same crimes the king had welcomed him in for. 

“I will escort you myself!” Jester insisted with a sweet smile, smoothing the moment over in an instant, hurrying down the steps of the raised platform to sweep her arm out invitingly, seeming to put even the two senior Volstruker off guard, “Please follow me! I would so love to hear all about your journey!”

Jester was very hard to say no to. Within minutes they were gone into the luxurious depths of the castle and, given that this had been a very small welcome in the early hours of the morning, this left Mollymauk alone with Caleb. 

His resolve broke as soon as the footsteps disappeared. Dropping all sense of decorum, he lurched forward, down the steps, unable to bear the distance between them. 

“Caleb,” he nearly sobbed out, though still in control enough to drop his voice, “Gods, Caleb, it's so good to see you again. There’s so much I need to say to you but...Caleb?”

He hadn’t moved. There hadn’t been so much as a twitch in his muscles. Molly was panting, wild eyed, now close enough to reach out and touch him but he hadn’t flinched. 

The voice stopped Mollymauk just as dead in his tracks. The most awful mix of familiar and foreign, the voice he knew but seeming to come from a different set of lungs. 

“Your permission to remove my hood, your highness?”

Molly frowned, not understanding, feeling like he was in some strange dream now, actions not making sense and words coming out disjointed, “I...yes?”

With a slight nod, gloved hands swept back the heavy hood. It was almost exactly the face he’d imagined, the strong jaw and close beard of rust, the piercing blue eyes and high, handsome cheekbones. He’d grown into the handsome man Molly had always known he would be. 

But he’d never imagined the expressionlessness in his eyes. The slack set of his jaw. He’d never imagined it would be like looking into the eyes of a doll or a painting. 

Gods, it was so much worse than the looks of fear, pain, even the anger and hatred he’d seen in his nightmares. 

“Caleb…” Molly groaned. 

“I would like to apologise for my grievous errors when we were younger men, your highness,” the man who wasn’t Caleb intoned, completely flat, “I compromised my position as your Volstruker and took advantage of you in a completely unacceptable way. I swear to you that all degeneracy has been wiped clean and I am returned ready to do nothing but serve you with body and soul.” 

He pulled his fist to his chest, keeping it there in a hard salute, one Molly had seen so many black clad figures make to Ikithon, to his father.

“I am yours, my prince.”

Molly’s heart shattered in his chest, tears running down his cheeks to drip onto the hands frozen halfway to taking Caleb in his arms.

“Caleb, what have they done to you?” he whispered, voice strained.

Someone had come home. But not the man he knew. 

Not the man he loved. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caleb has to figure out where he fits in the prince's life, all while grappling with memories he's supposed to have forgotten

Caleb had been warned how hard it would be. 

Things were the same but they weren’t. He knew the people they passed in the walkways by nothing but their footfalls but couldn’t recall their names. He knew the way through the endless corridors but had forgotten where they would end. He could place the smells of old paper, cool stone, dust on gold, oak and the rich smells from the kitchen, but he couldn’t connect them to memories. 

He was home but he wasn’t. 

Every moment spoke of a different piece of himself that had been clipped away, different parts of his brain that had been worked free and thrown out, a patchwork blanket of missing pieces. Every other step deeper into the castle brought another ghost to the edges of his vision, but none that he could fully bring into focus and confront directly. The place was the same but he was different and it was knowing that which hurt the most. 

Except it didn’t hurt. Because it wasn’t allowed to hurt. 

Caleb closed his eyes as a whip cracked in the back of his mind. 

But if it wasn’t allowed to hurt, what other words were there to describe how it felt to have the prince’s eyes on him? They had gone straight from the audience chamber to the open court that would take up the majority of the day, his highness seeming completely unsure what else to do. So now Caleb stood behind his gilded seat, a smaller, more subtle version of the king’s expansive throne, and watched as the prince heard not a word of anyone around him. 

And watched as the courtiers stared at and whispered about him. The wayward companion returned to the prince’s side with no warning, no fanfare, rekindling all the rumours that had surrounded his swift departure from the palace. Caleb had been warned there would be attention, something that made him uncomfortable as a Volstruker, but he would have to endure it and repeat the same story, that he’d been away under specialised training to better protect the future king. 

He was to consider it a further punishment for his past failures. 

The court passed without incident, the room was clear of any threat save the angry muttering that accompanied any decisions the king made that were taken poorly by the supplicants. Which did happen to be most of them. It was quickly cured by the guardsmen inching closer, some needing to clear a few inches of steel from their scabbards to silence the dissent. Caleb didn’t so much as twitch. Some jobs were for common guardsmen, some were for Volstruker. 

So it passed without incident. But it did pass. And that left him alone with the prince again. 

As the throne room cleared, Caleb felt the king’s blue eyes settle on him and quickly dart away again. Nor could he look at his son for very long. It was as if Caleb’s presence was a rotten tooth, drawing their attention against both of their wills, reopening that old ache between them. Reminding them of ten years ago. 

He remembered his highness  _ sobbing, holding the blankets up to his chin, trembling beneath them. Caleb meanwhile has nothing to cover himself with, not even his own hands, with his arm in Sorah’s cruelly hard grip. Molly begs her not to hurt him, rages at her to release him, pleads to his father in between sobs but Babenon turns his back and tells Sorah in tones of cold iron to take Caleb to the dungeons and inform Ikithon. Molly lurches, at his father or for Caleb, it is hard to say, but a sudden back hand sends him crumbling to the torn bedclothes and Caleb doesn’t even get to see Molly’s face one last time before the door to the bedchamber slams closed.  _

A whip crack lanced painfully across the memory, ending it sharply. Caleb shook himself, digging his fingernails into his palm for some focus and followed his highness out of the side door into the royal family’s private apartments. 

Here the hangings were much less severe, the carpets softer and torches a much more mellow gold. Here the tapestries didn’t depict bloody victories in war, they were scenes of beautiful Xorhasian wilderness, and accompanied by royal portraits where they were actually allowed to smile. Music echoed from somewhere, Queen Marion always had a spell ready in her chambers that she could call upon when the mood took her. He had resummoned it a few times, at his prince’s request, when he was younger. 

Of course, he was bound to do all his highness asked of him. 

The prince paused at a junction between hallways, shoulders tight, not turning. His voice was awkward, wavering, like it could snap at any moment. 

“Jester...she’d prepared a welcome home party for you. All of our friends, Beau and Yasha, Fjord and Cad...Veth. They were going to surprise you. Do you...do you remember them?”

The breath in Caleb’s throat seemed to freeze. He remembered  _ a laugh that always makes him feel like he belongs, hugs given freely that he at first tenses up to but then begins to accept and then to need. Snarky, smirking eyes, blows traded back and forth in the practise yard and out of it, the feeling he’d been so unfamiliar with but then realises it for what it is- having a sibling. A kind, low voice, light teasing, at first worrying that they were competing for Mollymauk’s affection but then quickly realising how wrong he is, glad to see her there every day. The smell of salt, tales of far off places he’d never seen but wanted to, a crooked smile that sparks an embarrassing crush in him early on, before he even dares hope that Molly’s heart might be heading in the same direction as his own. The smell of wet earth, soft fur, strange turns of phrase that make him smile, somehow effortlessly soothing the anxiety he always feels around medicine.  _

_ And Veth. Gods, Veth. The first face he sees when he arrives at the castle, still raw and terrified though he can’t show it. A gentle voice and kind eyes, clever hands. Sweetness when he needs it most. A piece of Blumenthal in this strange land, when he thought it had all been ripped away from him. The gods somehow deciding he deserved another chance at having a mother, after everything he’d- _

The whip crack again, the throb of agony, the sharp inhalation. He managed not to stagger but clearly couldn’t control his face as well. The prince’s eyes grew tight in profile, the side of his mouth he could see turned down in something that, of not outright grief, was still in the same family. 

“I’ll take you straight to my chambers. You can take some time to yourself and I...I’ll explain things to them,” he murmured. 

And when it turned to full blown grief, Caleb would know the prince had given up on him completely. There would be no returning to what they had ten years ago.

Which was the idea. Of course. 

“As you say, your highness,” Caleb nodded stiffly, feeling a spark of relief with guilt on it’s heels. He quashed them both swiftly. 

The prince’s bedchamber brought more memories he had to fight off, both good and bad. Keeping one half at bay while trying to bring the other close to be the salt in his wound, his painful reminder, was hard enough that for a moment he didn’t realise his highness was even speaking to him. 

Of course the castle’s decor couldn’t be changed at its core, the black, almost obsidian stone would stand long after any of them were gone. But somehow, as the prince stood in the centre of his chambers, he’d managed to make himself fit. The hangings were all the plum purples and bright golds that he loved, his jewellery hung on racks on the expansive dressing table, a stick of incense burned on the windowsill to fill the space with scents of amber and musk. His many swords were hanging from the walls, each hilt and scabbard more elaborate and jewel encrusted than the last, moon and star charts done on black vellum were stuck up around the window so he could look out and know what he was seeing. The light was warm, low and inviting. 

And there were books. Not many but a few, one on the table open by the bedside, a few piled on the dressing table, one on the windowsill. 

Caleb remembered,  _ his prince, his Mollymauk, smiling across the table from him, confessing in a gentle voice that he’d never liked reading until he met Caleb and oh gods, Caleb fell in love so hard and so fast. He remembered mouthing the words along with Molly, watching his lips form the words, watching his brow wrinkle as he concentrated and did what so many tutors had told him he’d never be able to do just because Caleb had taken the time to teach him with some gentleness. He remembered Mollymauk excitedly recounting plots and characters to him, hands moving in the air to form the twists in the tales he enjoyed so much. And he remembered having to pull a book out of Molly’s hands to kiss him... _

It was worse this time, the crack and snap in his head. It was getting worse every time. He was supposed to be better than this. 

“Caleb?” the prince’s voice was full of panic, “Caleb, what hurts?”

There were hands on him, holding his arms tightly, and when he managed to open his eyes, the prince’s face was inches from his own. He could smell his perfume, he could see the red rims around the eyes where he’d wept, the edges of his tattoos. He felt every inch of worry and care in his prince’s eyes and he remembered, he  _ remembered. _

Caleb wrenched backwards out of the prince’s grip to the snap of a whip, so hard and fast that his back hit the far wall and a dull ache went up his spine. He heard a pained moan from the other man, looked up in time to see him retract his hands as quickly as if they’d been burned. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, the adornments in his horns ringing softly as he trembled, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t think.”

“It is not for you to apologise, your highness,” Caleb’s words were level, even as he panted and broke out in a sweat just from standing upright, “The fault is mine. The training I underwent may take some time to fully sink in but I assure you, I am cured of the madness that possessed me as a child. I am...I am ready to be your Volstruker. Wholly and completely.” 

He had thought that would please the prince but found himself feeling no disappointment when it didn’t. His highness only gave a shaky sigh, pressed his fingertips to his temples and closed his eyes tight. 

“I...I need you to know I’m not angry with you, Caleb,” he said after a long few moments of silence, “This is not your fault, none of it. And I will do everything I can to help you. It may just take me some time to work out what helps and what...what hurts.”

“Help me?” Caleb didn’t understand, “Your highness, I have been helped. My master and the other members of my order removed any trace of the degeneracy that poisoned me.” 

“That made you love me,” the prince added, his voice twisted by pain as his eyes opened and fixed on Caleb’s face. 

He swallowed hard, his training’s words suddenly difficult to bring forth, “It is not my role to...that is not my purpose. My purpose is to protect you, your highness. To serve you, to see you take the throne. To die for you.”

“You used to  _ live _ for me, Caleb,” his prince whispered sorrowfully. 

His mouth opened, his jaw worked soundlessly. He tried to summon the proper response, the words he’d been taught but he didn’t understand why his throat was closing to them. 

Finally, he simply said, “My eyes were opened.”

The fight went out of the prince, his shoulders slumped and his eyes turned away, “I think I need to...rest. I will go speak to my friends and then turn in. I suggest you do the same.”

The sun had barely cleared it’s noon position but Caleb knew better than to question the prince. He was, of course, long past the age where his days were filled with lessons and tutors and instructors, he could do what he wished with his hours now. 

He had grown into a fine heir these past ten years. And now Caleb was here to see him become a great king. 

“As you wish, your highness. If I may ask, are my chambers still where they were when I left?”

“Your chambers?” the prince blinked at him uncomprehendingly, “You...you haven’t used those since you were ten. You always…”

This time, he was strong enough to fight the memories off. He did not think of a handful of cold, lonely nights in his own sparse, stone room that were peppered with nightmares. He did not think of the one night where Mollymauk- the prince- took his hand as he was about to retire and confessed shyly that he could hear him crying out in the night, that he had nightmares sometimes too since he’d had to move out of his mama’s apartments, and asked if he would like to share his bed instead. So they could be there for each other. He did not think of years and years worth of another warm body in silk sheets beside him, arms around him when the nightmares came, though much more infrequently. He did not think of the blankets pulled up over his head so he and his best friend could whisper and giggle and gossip until the dawn. And he did not think of shy glances, blushes that began to rise on his face for reasons he wasn’t sure of yet, he did not think of hundreds of nights that were spent in perfect innocence until they weren’t. 

He did not think of the first and last time they made love in that bed, on Mollymauk’s eighteenth birthday, thinking they had made themselves their own little world within its silken hangings, a world where they could have everything they wanted even if everyone else said no. 

Caleb did not think of any of it. He felt the pinch of someone else’s satisfaction. 

“It is my place, your highness,” he said simply. 

The prince swallowed hard and lifted a limp hand to indicate the door Caleb remembered, concealed behind a tapestry and a veil of magic to hide its existence from any potential thieves or assassins coming to threaten his charge. 

“Many thanks,” Caleb dipped into a low bow, “Please call on me should you require anything.”

He had little memories of the room itself but there was a strong sense of familiarity to it, he’d slept on spare stone bunks like this at the Volstruker training grounds and the Soltryce Academy as a very young boy. It reminded him again who he was and what he was here to do, as he set down his small bag of belongings and hung his knives up on the wall rack, alongside his belt of magical ingredients. 

He was here to protect the prince. And now he was cured, that was precisely what he intended to do.

The next weeks were difficult, it would be impossible for Caleb to admit otherwise, though he did all he could to not show it on his face. 

It was rather like being at a funeral where he was the corpse. 

It was impossible to avoid the prince’s friends. Not when they consisted of the princess, the master at arms, a captain in the royal fleet, the palace healer and the head of the household staff. And when one was second only to himself in hours spent at the prince’s side. They didn’t spend time as a group, like they would as children, and Caleb knew with a strong guilty kind of sadness that it was because of him, the ghost at the feast. But the prince had dealings with them all, of course, and in these stiff, awkward times they would glance at Caleb helplessly, like he was a drowning man just off shore and they had no idea how to save him. 

They would eventually realise that he didn’t require it. They would. Jester’s eyes would stop spilling over every time she came to see her brother, Beau would stop nearly snapping her staff to splinters as she watched him spar alone while the prince trained at blades, Caduceus would stop murmuring prayers at his back. And Veth...well, Veth was avoiding him altogether. 

Caleb expected it to grow easier over time, that was what he’d been told. That the memories which assaulted him and tried to drag him away from his purpose would fade over time, as he grew used to their temptations and overcoming them. And if asked, he would insist, stone faced, that they were. 

They were just also growing more frequent. 

He did expect to be asked. His master was in the castle, though they didn’t see each other much in the fast running currents of royal life. Currents that the prince did his level best to steer away from the former archmage, not difficult to do when his master spent nearly all his days in the lab he’d constructed in one of the far towers. That certainly hadn’t changed in the intervening ten years, something that Caleb found himself rather glad of, though he quickly admonished himself for that. He just couldn’t have those harsh, yellow eyes on him, whether it was from across the main hall at a banquet or in the close council chambers whenever his master was called on, without remembering that his most shameful, weakest moments were stored behind them. 

But Caleb wasn’t fool enough to think that just because he so rarely saw his master, he wasn’t under scrutiny. More times than he wanted to think about, he felt Sorah’s blank, empty gaze on him and he would feel the throb of an old bruise on the top of his arm, one he didn’t think would fade with time. 

Not that he didn’t deserve it. Of course.

Every day became much the same. He would wake before the prince, usually after a night of difficult dreams, and spend the intervening time going through his war mage’s books, storing several powerful spells that would best serve him in protecting the prince that day. Ones to turn back dangerous beasts if they were going hunting, ones to effortlessly memorise any information if there was to be a council meeting, ones to walk on water if they were going sailing. And always the usual ones, for driving back poisons, quickening his reflexes, allowing him to pass unnoticed. 

He’d always excelled at the magical side of his calling, right from when he was young, only really needing to work hard at the pure weapon aspect of it. Which was why, once his spells were stored, he would spend the rest of the pre dawn hours practising with his knives in his room, using spells to summon ghostly foes to fight against. 

By the time he had killed hundreds of times over, it would be a simple matter of washing in cold water, dressing in his uniform and slipping into the prince’s bed chamber to be ready for when he awoke. 

The rest of the day would depend on the prince’s schedule. It would seem the duties of a crown prince had piled up somewhat in the space of ten years, there was very little free time to be found in their days. Public events, councils, open courts, banquets and hunts and expeditions held by courtiers wishing to curry favour, they would often be part of the king’s retinue or else dispatched to stand in his place for all those invitations he didn’t have the time to answer but couldn’t afford to ignore. It would seem the king was keeping his heir close, quite deliberately putting him on display. 

And Caleb could all too easily read the effect that was having on the prince. Though he kept on a carefully constructed mask of joviality and charm, helped by all the silks and low cut samites and dripping gemstones, Caleb saw him in his moments out of the performance too.

He saw how he’d shift uncomfortably at some of his father’s decisions in the open court, how his shoulders would tense when the king would dismiss the diplomats from other kingdoms with words sharper and more offensive than necessary. He felt the waves of distrust coming off the prince when one of the king’s financiers would wave away any questions he asked about the state of royal coffers. He heard the tense exchanges between him and King Babenon, in hallways and anterooms and side chambers, when they could be certain they were heard only by their Volstruker, conversations that ended in angry curses from both father and son, neither of them happy when the prince inevitably flinched first. 

Sometimes it was enough that Caleb would hear the echoed crack of a fierce backhanded slap, a decade old now. Judging by the prince and king’s expressions at the end of these tense, clipped exchanges, he didn’t think he was the only one to hear it.

And he took note of how the prince would steal snatches of time alone where he could, purposefully wandering away from the group on a hunt to take a moment’s breath of silent forest air from the tree’s edge or stepping right up to the end of the jetty as they’d load off the royal barge so he could close his eyes and hear nothing but the crash of the waves for just a minute. These moments would always be fleeting but Caleb got the sense that they were all that got the prince through the day. 

And once or twice, Caleb would feel those red eyes on him as if he was going to reach out to him, to share his momentary peace with him, but it would only ever be a few seconds before he remembered and the eyes would flit away, to focus again on whatever the prince was looking at out in the wilderness.

The days were much the same. But they weren’t getting any easier. 

Caleb thought that with a bitter touch of frustration that he’d admonished himself for before it was even fully formed. The door to his chamber closed with its usual hiss of reforming magic, closing him off from the prince if not from the gulf between them. He disrobed quickly, letting the heavy, black material pool on the floor without much care. The runes woven into the fabric repelled stains and creases about as well as they repelled the points of knives and antagonistic spells. 

Once down to his undershorts, he allowed himself a selfish moment just to sit and feel the full weight of things, sinking down onto his, honestly, hideously uncomfortable bed. The only thing preventing him from cracking under that same weight every day was telling himself that it would get better. That he’d get stronger, better, that he’d shake off the weaknesses he’d been cursed with. 

But each day was exactly like the other, the same memories trying to drag him to places he wasn’t allowed to go, the same sad eyes on him from his former friends who wanted him to be a person he wasn’t allowed to be. 

And the prince, his sad, lonely, frightened prince, hiding everything behind a mask. 

Caleb wasn’t sure how many more days like this he could take. 

He cleaned his weaponry to take his mind off things, neatly labelling and shelving his host of fears and anxieties and closing the doors on them through the easy, regular pass of the whetstone over the blades of one knife after the other. It was mindless and repetitive, giving him some kind of reprieve, even if sleep was and would remain a long way off. Sometimes it was better for him to just skip it entirely, to just let his brain switch off like this until the new day began. Certainly some of the dreams he’d been having lately made him very anxious to limit the amount of time he was at their mercy. 

Volstruker don’t need sleep the same way mortal men do, he told himself though it didn’t really sound like his voice in his mind, because we are not mortal men. We are more and we are less. We are beings of magic. Does magic need sleep?  _ Does magic need jealousy, hate, does magic need love, Caleb Widogast? Because if you would like to argue that point then get up off the floor, cease that pathetic crying and make your case for the Volstruker inviting this weakness into our ranks. No? I thought not. Then do your best to remember your manhood and remember the vows you made in exchange for your life, what little value it has.  _

_ Or are you not one of us?  _

Caleb’s grip on the knife hilt tightened, his knuckles white. 

The candle was a few inches shorter than it had been before. There was a growing pool of pale wax threatening to gutter it, to drown it within itself, giving Caleb an odd sense of kinship with the thing. When he managed to unclench his fist from around his knife and push back his hair, he found himself sweating slightly, his shoulders hitching with breaths deeper than they had any right to be. To his shame, his cheeks were wet and it was all he could do to hold back further sobs.

_ Are you not one of us? _

The sobs hadn’t ceased and a bitter fury at himself rose in his chest. Until he realised the sounds weren’t his own. They were coming from behind the door that separated his and the prince’s chambers. 

Instincts flared to life with an audible crackle. Caleb swept up the knife he’d been holding, lurching to grab the next closest one that was at its fullest, most wicked sharpness. Not even needing to speak aloud, he let his magic run down each of them like hot lava, igniting the poison in one and the ghostly flame on the other. He didn’t pause for his cloak or to raise any kind of shield spell. There wasn’t time for such luxuries when something was threatening his prince. 

He chose stealth over an all out assault, he was no Eadwulf and knew his strengths. But it was hard, so hard, when another sob found it’s way from his prince’s throat to his ears, when images of him being hurt, being threatened surged up like vomit, consuming him with a kind of bloodlust and fury he knew he was supposed to feel as a war mage but had never been able to truly summon. Only when someone hurt Mollymauk. 

But as he slipped through the magical barrier between their rooms, feeling it’s power stick to his skin like a veil of honey, and sank into the room’s thick shadows, he could see no assailant. His mind flicked through other possibilities- invisible wraiths, malicious dreamwalkers, a deadly poison only not taking hold- but after a few seconds lurking in the dark, like a snake, he could sense no kind of murderous presence, visible or invisible, flesh or magic. 

Only his prince, curled in on himself in the middle of his expansive bed, the sheets wrapped tight around him like strangling bonds. Only his soft sobs, his face contorted in misery as his chest rose and fell harshly, his eyes tight shut. Instantly, he recognised it for what it was. 

Caleb didn’t think. He didn’t allow himself to question his choice, to filter it through other people’s voices. He just let his knives drop to the carpet, where they made twin, muffled thuds, and moved swiftly to his prince’s side, sitting on the edge of the bed. He leaned over and gently pushed the hair back from his damp forehead, shushing him as softly as the whisper of a candle flame. A split second’s thought and the candles closest to the bed leapt to life, cutting through the thick black of the night and bathing them in warm gold. So he could see with perfect clarity as Mollymauk’s eyes opened slowly, at first seeing only whatever had been terrifying him, but then gradually focusing and letting the nightmare turn to smoke. 

“It’s alright, Mollymauk,” Caleb murmured, hand still cupping his face, “It was just a bad dream.”

“Caleb…” Molly’s voice was weak and raspy with hours of sleep, he tried to rise, “You’re okay. Thank the gods, I saw...I heard…” 

He shook himself, deliberately breathing slowly and deeply. He’d taught Caleb the same trick, years ago, for when he began to panic. 

“You’re right. It was just a bad dream.”

He sighed then, leaning into Caleb’s touch, bringing one hand up to settle over the wizard’s and twin their fingers together. His lips pursed slightly, turned to the scarred fingers he held so tightly…

And then they both realised when they were. 

The two of them froze, guilt leaping onto both faces, frantic apologies rising to both lips. But neither quite managed to give them voice, seeing their expression mirrored back at them.

“Your highness…” Caleb spoke first, shakily, unable to make his hand withdraw. 

“You...you called me Mollymauk just now,” his prince-  _ the  _ prince- breathed, hope dawning in his tired eyes. 

Gods, anything but that. Anything but hope. Caleb knew exactly how hope could be turned into the most painful weapon, a poison you’d gladly gulp down only to have it burn worse than anything. 

“I...I wasn’t thinking,” he confessed, “I only wanted to help you, when I saw you in such distress…”

The prince sighed, shoulders slumping. He let go of Caleb’s hand, hugging his knees to his chest and suddenly looking all of his mere twenty eight years and not very much like a crown prince at all. Was ten years really as great a distance as all that? Hadn’t they just been boys, when Caleb had last blinked?

“I won’t put you through any more pain, Caleb, I swear that to you,” he told his knees, unable to lift his head until the moment he whispered, “But...is there any hope for us? Is there anything of the man I loved left in you?”

_ Yes,  _ a bruised and broken and bleeding part of Caleb groaned, straining towards the touch of that warm skin again. But there was also the crack of the whip, echoing through the dark spaces. And from here, the voice sounded so, so small and frail in comparison. 

“I am yours,” he finally said, voice low, “Here, as I am now, I can be yours, my prince. The man I was, he was taken away from you and always would have been. They would never have let us be. But now…any life with you in it is better than one without.” 

That was the truth at least. Close enough to the right words that there was no sound of any whip crack.

“A life where your mind is not your own,” there was bitterness in his prince’s voice, “A life where you can be hurt at one vile man’s whims. A life where you can’t be yourself and live as you will.” 

Caleb met his prince’s eyes, “A life not so dissimilar from yours?”

His mouth fell open and Caleb winced, certain for a moment that he’d overstepped himself, that he was about to feel a fury worthy of Babenon’s heir. But then a rueful sigh escaped and his prince only sat back against the headboard, eyes sad. 

“I suppose it isn’t...but that does not make it right. And it does not mean I’m giving up on you, Caleb.”

He did not trust himself to answer right away. Carefully, carefully, like dodging traps that would spring if he moved too fast, finding the right balance between what he wanted to say and what he was permitted to say.

“You never did, my prince.”

That made him smile, a tired smile but a true one, no mask between them. Each of them knew the other was telling the truth. It felt good, being truthful. 

“Would you permit me to stay here for the rest of the night, your highness? I don’t feel right leaving you alone, if you were to have another nightmare I want to be here for you,” Caleb asked gently. 

The prince’s lip curled up on one side, “Here? In my bed?”

“It’s the best place for me to protect you, your highness,” Caleb nodded firmly, face straight though something inside him thrilled. 

“Very well,” he chuckled, sinking back down into the expanse of the feather mattress, resting back into the same curled ball he’d always slept in, “Goodnight, Caleb.”

“Sleep well, Mollymauk,” he replied, voice soft, unable to parse the feelings that rose up in him when his words sent the prince to sleep with a smile on his face. For now, he just allowed himself to enjoy them. He was allowed to take pride in his work after all. 

Volstruker did not need sleep the way mortal men did. And that night, as Caleb spent the long, dark hours watching as his prince slept peacefully, untouched by any more nightmares, he was so glad of that fact. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Molly begins to grow into his role as the crown prince

Mollymauk wondered if people speculated about why he spent so much time down in the practice yards, why the early hours of the morning often found him in the armory or out in the moonlit space at the very centre of the castle courtyard, scimitars whirling like shards of starlight in his hands. Probably they assumed he was down here fucking a succession of stable boys and chambermaids, or else this was where he met his personal smugglers who provided him with various powders and pills and injectables. 

He wondered if his father ever proudly spoke of how martial his son was, if he ever boasted of his prowess with weaponry. If he ever took comfort in the fact that, despite it all, at least his heir knew how to kill. 

Mollymauk didn’t know what he hoped for. He’d long ago given up on trying to understand what the king wanted from him or whether he cared. 

The truth was, training just gave him some comfort. It was repetitive, rhythmic and required all of his attention, even thud of his heavy heartbeat. It was simple. When he was swinging at the wicker targets or spearing sacks of flour shaped vaguely like people or deflecting bolts of low level magic that would give him a faint electric shock if they found his flesh, he wasn’t thinking about how he hadn’t been allowed outside of the castle walls more than a year now. He wasn’t thinking about the poorly concealed fury in his father’s eyes when someone had spoken against him in the last council meeting, the frequency with which the occupants of those other seats rotated out, certain formerly important members that he hadn’t heard from since they’d shown their dissent towards some of the latest policies, the angry letters that came from neighbouring kingdoms. 

And he wasn’t thinking about how before too long, it would all be his. And he had no idea what he would do then. 

He was no fool, despite his carefully sewn costume. He knew the king was keeping him on a short leash these past few years to groom him for the throne he’d occupy one day, so he could learn to inspire the same fear, the same flinches from a gaze alone, the same ruthlessness. He’d had his years of freedom, of slipping past his guards at night to go to the lower echelons of the city and tip in gold at the taverns. He’d been allowed his friends and their little adventures. He’d been allowed to be himself. 

And look at the trouble it had caused. 

Mollymauk closed his eyes to it all and slid his scimitars out of their sheaths. The yard around him was silent, these earliest hours just past midnight were the only times when the castle and its hundreds of residents made no noise at all. Just after when the night guard took their leave but before the bakers rose to start up the ovens and begin the morning’s bread. He could be completely alone here. 

Beau usually said she would kill him for messing with her grounds, asking him if  _ he  _ was a godsdammned Expositor trained monk of the Cobalt Soul explicitly hired by the king to serve as the master at arms or if he was a pampered parrot of a prince whose grip was always off so he scuffed up her training swords and couldn’t work a staff to save his life. But they both knew about these little night time visits he made when he couldn’t sleep or when the day had just been too much for him and not a word was said. Sometimes he caught her putting the dummies back into place after he’d forgotten exactly how she liked them aligned or rebrushing the sand in the training circle after he’d not done it to her exact specifications. A look would pass between them when she saw him watching, a momentary pause, but then they’d go right back to good naturedly insulting each other as only two friends could and not another word would be said. 

Mollymauk was grateful for that. Not that he’d ever tell her. 

He’d stripped down to just a loose shirt, bound by the leather guards on his forearms and his tight leggings, hair pushed back off his face with a band. The night air rose chills on his purple skin, prickling as it filled his lungs, waking up something inside him. 

His first cut was so sharp it could be heard as it pierced the air. Mollymauk revelled in the stretch of his muscles as he held his sword out in a low lunge, holding as still as he could for a few pulsing heartbeats before sweeping into a whirling storm of attacks at nothing. High cuts, low arcs, turns that brought one leg flush with his nose, seconds where the swords changed hands, moments where one hand was splayed on the sand below him and supporting his whole body, snapshot instants rushing by like lightning. It was a dance and by gods, did he miss dancing. 

The swords dance fit his heartbeat so well, when one sword stopped dead with a metallic ring, it was as if his heart had frozen in his ribcage. His eyes snapped open. 

And found his nose inches from Caleb’s, his eyes bright and a small smile playing on his face. And his fingers tight around the grip of the short dagger whose guard had caught the point of his scimitar. 

“I told you years ago that these curved swords of yours are too easy to turn,” he said in that soft, unassuming way of his. 

Molly huffed out a laugh, shoulders relaxing though not enough to break the block between the two blades, “So I move so fast no one has a chance to turn them. Problem solved.” 

Caleb’s mouth quirked and one eyebrow lifted as he eyed their crossed blades, “No one?”

“Well...we can’t all be Volstruker.”

Something inside Mollymauk thrilled, against his better judgement. Times like this he could convince himself the last ten years hadn’t happened at all and the Caleb by his side now was the Caleb he’d fallen in love with. 

“Perhaps...though you really need to tell me if you’re ever planning on leaving your chambers in the dead of night, your highness. I don’t mind admitting you scared me half to death.” 

Molly’s smile curdled with guilt, “Ah. I’m sorry. It’s...it’s been a while since I needed to think about things like that.” 

“No harm done,” Caleb allowed, “This time...though as long as I’m here, would you prefer to train with a partner?”

Molly’s laugh rang out across the empty yard and bounced off the stone towers that surrounded them, as he finally broke the embrace of their blades and stepped back, “So you can beat the tar out of me like you did when we were kids?”

Caleb replied with simple courtesy, “Oh, I’m sure his highness’ skills have improved at least somewhat. And if not, well, it is as you say. We cannot all be Volstruker.”

“You’re on. Simple straight blades, if you would be so kind.”

Caleb quickly fetched two from the armoury, their edges filed down so they could serve as training swords. Molly couldn’t help but note Caleb was dressed similarly to himself, a simple sleeping shirt thrown over the trousers from his black uniform, cut close so as not to hamper his moves in combat. He also couldn’t help but note his sleep-tousled hair, not tied away from his hard features, the gentler set of his face than any daylight hour saw, the almost see through cotton of his simple shirt…

Molly slapped himself mentally, turning away as soon as his blade was in his hand.  _ You aren’t being fair to him  _ he snapped,  _ control your damn self.  _

Best to start soon, so he could chalk his raised pulse and flushed cheeks to something else. He turned as Caleb finished tying back his hair and settled into an easy starting stance, mirror to the one Molly quickly established. Their blades tapped once, as if two old friends in greeting, before Caleb lunged forward with a sudden advance. Molly had to move swiftly to block it with a hurried, sloppy front guard. 

He looked at Caleb, scandalised, “Weren’t you asleep not ten minutes ago?”

The ghost of his old friend smiled at him and broke the guard cleanly, beginning a rapid exchange of slash and parry that Molly visibly struggled to counter. It had always been this way between the two of them, Caleb’s Volstruker training more than a match for Molly’s own, even after he’d gotten a Cobalt Soul monk as his instructor. In a way, he’d always secretly appreciated each time Caleb knocked him into the dust. 

It was just one of the many ways Molly could know Caleb had seen him as a friend rather than a prince. 

For a while it was just the clang of their blades against each other, the scuff of their feet in the sand and their own rapid breathing. Or rather, Molly’s rapid breathing. Caleb was like something robotic, never seeming to tire or miss a single move or break a sweat. Molly, in comparison, could feel a blush raising on his chest and see his breath fogging between them.

In fact, the only time Molly saw any change in his expression was when an empty fade of Caleb’s brought their swords kissing sharply in front of their faces, their noses inches from each other. He thought he saw something in Caleb’s eyes then but it could well have been a flicker of moonlight, a second’s beat before they stepped apart and Caleb lunged again. 

Molly was flagging badly after another minute of combat, shoulders heaving and brow furrowing as he moved from guard position to guard position, not even able to try and land a hit on Caleb. Before too long his arm would fail and Caleb would have him.

There would have been something comforting about that. Something familiar. 

He was a little regretful when the time finally came to shift the position of his feet ever so slightly, to centre himself almost imperceptibly differently. At Caleb’s next slash, he doubled over, hissing through his teeth, pivoting away from Caleb and cradling his sword arm. 

“Ach,” he heard Caleb groan, “Molly, I’m sor-”

He didn’t even get a chance to finish. Because in the time it took to form those syllables, the sword changed from one of Molly’s hands to the other and he struck cobra fast. One foot smartly hooked Caleb’s from underneath him, Molly’s perfectly undamaged sword arm pushing his chest so he went down heavily onto the sand. Before he even registered what had happened, his prince’s sword point was at his throat. 

Molly grinned down at him, framed in moonlight, “Yield?”

“Yield,” Caleb didn’t even hesitate. If Molly were in the mood to really indulge himself, he’d have said it was awe making his voice so breathless, “I don’t...what happened?”

“We’re not children anymore, Caleb,” he replied, not hiding the tinge of sadness in his voice, “And I am not Volstruker. I tricked you.”

He was relieved to see the smile break on Caleb’s face and how readily he took the offered hand that replaced the swordpoint. 

“No. No, you most certainly are not Volstruker, your highness.”

Once he was upright, Caleb looked at him earnestly, barely even noting the sand in his hair, “Can you teach me how to do that? How to feign it so effortlessly, how you shifted your weight like that…”

Molly chuckled, “Wasn’t part of your training, hm?”

“No,” Caleb frowned a little, though at some thought in his head rather than at his prince, “No, the Volstruker… they wouldn’t ever have thought of it. Showing any kind of weakness, ever even seeing it could be an advantage...it is not their way.”

_ Their way, _ Molly bit his lip.  _ Not  _ our  _ way.  _

He wasn’t being fair, he knew that. But how was any of this fair?

“I can teach you,” he nodded quickly, “Of course I can teach you.”

“You teaching me something...” Caleb smiled, “It would make rather a nice change, wouldn’t it?”

_ It would be about damn time,  _ Molly thought tiredly. 

Neither of them noticed they hadn’t yet unclasped their hands. 

Things seemed to have gotten a little easier for Caleb over the last months, at least in some areas. Molly was at least relieved to see that he was willing to spend time with their friends. 

It had been awkward at first, when he’d been avoiding them entirely outside of when the constant tether between him and the prince forced it on him, when no one seemed quite sure how to act around this new version of him. Quick hellos whenever Jester came in for one of their regular chats, hellos that fast turned tearful. Sad glances from Beau whenever he accompanied Molly to training, ones that quickly turned to anger on her face. Yasha staring at his back with an unreadable expression. 

There had been one quite terrible instance when Veth had come in to change Molly’s bed linen one morning and come face to face with Caleb coming out of his own chambers to greet the prince as he finished dressing. Veth had frozen in place, her eyes wide and so heartbreakingly sad as she faced the young man she’d considered a second son. Caleb had opened his mouth, searching for something, anything, to say but Veth had turned and fled before he could. He’d gone very quiet for the rest of the day, Mollymauk noticed. 

But Molly couldn’t avoid his friends forever, not when they’d been the only thing that had gotten him through the last ten years. He missed the evenings where they’d lounge in one of the many royal sitting rooms with their feet up on furniture older than they were, making jokes and laughing, and somehow everything would seem alright. He missed how easy everything had been. 

And, as it turned out, sometimes things could be made easy. Because after a few times standing in the corner like a ghost, Caleb was pulled back in slowly and steadily, like a man coming in from the bitter cold to a roaring fire. No one was quite sure how it happened, when he started to smile at Fjord’s stories of the sea again or let Veth sit in his lap like she used to or when Yasha began to shave his beard for him again. There was no grand moment when they all whirled around to see him sitting there in the same spot he’d always occupied, the one that no one had dared move into after he was taken away. It happened gradually, the way small streams ford deep canyons. The way raindrops can bring down a prison wall. 

The way hope could bloom in the pit of your stomach no matter how hard you tried. 

It was one of those long, golden evenings where all of their schedules somehow managed to align and they all found themselves in the room they usually took over. The fire roared, thanks to Caleb, and the wine was flowing for those who cared to partake, the whole air smelled of freshly smoking wood and velvet and warmth. One of those nights where Molly could look around and feel truly, deeply fortunate, the way all the riches and status and power never made him feel.

“...I’m only saying, if a princess can’t eat lemon cakes at midnight, then what is the point of being a princess?” Jester was saying huffily, her head resting in Beau’s lap, “I’d even go down and make them!”

“If you did, we could kiss the kitchen goodbye,” Molly flicked his tail at her nose, she was well in target from where he sat on the carpet, leaning back against one of the settees to be close to the fire, “Most of the western castle too, probably.”

“Stone doesn’t melt, idiot!” she shot back at him, swiping at his tail like a kitten. Yasha, who had her feet in her lap, somewhere within the skirts of her voluminous dress, snorted. 

“Dragonfire can melt stone,” Fjord interjected, sipping his wine, “Saw the ruins of Port Udall once. All the buildings were slumped over like old candles, even the stone ones. The rest of it was bone and old ash and nothing growing. They said an ancient red dragon did it.”

“There! If an ancient red dragon can do it, Jessie can definitely do it,” Molly said firmly, before yelping as his sister caught his tail again in retaliation. 

“Thank the gods nothing like that has ever come here,” Veth shuddered, glancing up nervously as if dragons might descend at any moment, “Think of the damage it would do to the lower levels…”

“It would be hard for them to look worse than they already do.”

Of course it was Caleb who’d spoken, his voice was softer and quieter than everyone else’s. And now it was especially faded and sad, enough that the light, jovial tone shrivelled as if it had fallen in the fire, while all eyes went to him. 

“What’s that mean?” Beau frowned.

Caleb seemed to shrink a little, as he always did when he was bearing the weight of more than one person’s attention. He cleared his throat awkwardly, “Um...well I saw it as I rode through the city. Have...have any of you been down there recently? To the slums?”

“Slums?” Molly repeated, something gripping his stomach in a tight grip.

“That’s what Master Trent called them,” Caleb blinked, looking around them all, “And..well, the description was accurate.”

“There have been more beggars around the docks recently,” Fjord admitted, looking like a man having a difficult realisation. It was mirrored around the group. 

Except on Mollymauk’s face. Mollymauk only felt simmering fury. 

“And in the marketplace,” Caduceus echoed, “Everyone I’ve seen, I’ve given food to and I’ve treated some deficiencies I’ve seen but...there’s new faces all the time it seems.”

“Tell me, Caleb,” Molly managed to get out through his gritted teeth. 

“Well…” he seemed hesitant, probably seeing what was building in the red eyes staring at him, “There’s shacks thrown up all around the inside of the city walls, some on the outside too when they can’t find the space. There was filth running through the streets, there’s no gutters down there so people must be getting sick. Everyone looked...well, desperate. There were, um...there were children. I don’t think they had anyone to look after them. They seemed hungry. Master Ikithon said a lot of them were coming in from the country, the harvest was so poor that many of them lost their farms when they couldn’t pay their taxes.” 

Molly’s voice came out with the dangerous regularity of someone about to explode, “And you’re telling me, Caleb, that I knew none of this. I’m the fucking heir to this entire kingdom and I had no idea my people were starving less than a godsdamned  _ mile from where I’m sitting right this fucking second?” _

His voice grew to a roar at the end and a crack ran up the glass goblet he was holding. The wine became vinegar on his tongue. No one knew what to say, there was only the crackling of the fire. Or perhaps that was the fury sparking in his chest. 

“There has not been a single word of this at any council session I’ve sat on in the last year, no petitions in court. No word of any kind of help, no plan for what to do. Just more and more shit about the fucking taxes that are apparently starving those people. Is that what you’re telling me, Caleb?”

“Yes,” Caleb’s blue eyes were steady and sad, none of the wariness he saw in his friends. 

“Then what the fuck is my father doing about this?” he demanded, barely recognising that he was looking down on them all, that he’d stood up at some point and hardly noticed, “Where the hell is he when his people actually need him? I’m just supposed to inherit a kingdom full of starving people who think the man on all their coins has abandoned them?  _ Is this what being a fucking king is?” _

Finally the glass shattered in his grip, filling the stunned silence with an icy crunch and a quick hiss of pain he assumed only he could hear as the shards bit into his hand. The anger burned away quickly, leaving a cold, empty vacuum in its wake that shame and hopelessness rushed to fill. Trembling, he pressed his one good hand over his eyes. 

“I’m sorry…” he croaked, “I’m not mad at you all, I just…I shouldn’t have lost my temper…”

He knew his sister had stood and taken his hand by the sweet, almost sugary, vanilla smell of her magic, warm as it ran into his cuts and closed them. 

“This isn’t the only thing he’s been keeping from us, is it?” she asked sadly. 

Molly opened his eyes, wishing there was anything he could say to take the hurt from her voice. She played the innocent, for her and their family’s benefit, but those wide, purple eyes saw more than anyone would expect. He just wished there were better things to look at. 

She’d always wanted to believe the best of their father, the way she wanted to believe in everyone, even after his relationship with their mother had started to fray and he’d caused such damage to Mollymauk. But it wasn’t just him who’d started to see the way the crown had poisoned the man they both used to look up to. 

“Well…” she sighed, when her brother’s silence answered her, “This doesn’t have to be the way things are. This isn’t the kind of king you have to be.”

Molly inhaled and exhaled slowly, the ghost of the cuts prickling as he flexed his hand to better hold Jester’s, “He isn’t going to like it.”

The shame at the fear in his own voice roiled inside him. How much had been sliding past because he’d been too scared to see it, how many people had been hurt because he couldn’t stand up to the king? 

All of a sudden, the distance between him and his friends shrank, he felt them close about him. He felt hands on his shoulders, on his back, on his arms, eyes on him that didn’t judge or scorn. If this room was the only place where he didn’t have to think about everything that worried him, all the imperfections in his life, then this was where he could be brave. 

This was where he could decide what his duty really was. 

Mollymauk drew himself up and nodded, “And he can go ahead and not like it. He wants me close, he wants me as his heir then he can deal with the decisions I make. What the hell is he going to do, throw me in the dungeons?”

“You’d break out in five minutes tops,” Beau smiled wryly. 

“And we’d come get you in ten,” Fjord nodded firmly. 

Molly’s laugh was thin but it was there and he felt better for hearing it, “Well then...I’m going to need some gold. Not from the treasury, my own. We’ll need to bring in food from along the coast, I’ll send a request right now. But until then, we’ll take from the kitchens. We have more than enough, there’s damn well going to be some to spare for our own people. Beau, Yasha, go and commandeer us some wagons.”

“Right now, my prince?” Yasha’s flickering smile showed she knew the answer. 

“Of course right now,” Molly nodded, “We’ve let far too much time go by already. Anyone has a problem, tell them they can take it up with their crown prince.”

“And their princess,” Jester interjected, beaming.

Molly grinned back at her proudly, “Are you all with me?”

The resounding, affirmative reply was all Molly needed to carry this the rest of the way with a smile on his face. 

He handed out jobs and dispersed them, feeling an unfamiliar but welcome sense of pride in what they were doing, in each of his friends and, if he was honest, in himself. It was then he noticed Caleb, still where he’d been sat for the entire evening, not having moved a muscle though his eyes said everything his friends had if in a different way. 

“I’ve been a bit of a fool, haven’t I, Caleb?” he sighed once they were alone, feeling the edges of that pit still inside him, still with some room for guilt and shame. 

Caleb rose, crossed the space between them and grasped his hand, steadying him enough that the bad feelings retreated. 

“I think you’ve been scared for a long time, Mollymauk,” he spoke softly, eyes gentle and reflecting the movement of the fire, the same one that turned his hair into burnished copper, “But now you’re becoming the king I always knew you were going to be.”

“Always?” Molly found himself having to swallow hard, feeling every inch of Caleb’s skin that pressed against his own. 

“Of course. From the moment I met you, I knew you would be a king I’ll be proud to stand beside.”

This high up on the battlements, the wind found its way under Molly’s hood even as tightly as it was pulled down to cover his distinctive purple hair. He felt a churning dizziness in his stomach as he peered over the edge and saw the ground so far below him. 

“Ready?”

Beside him, Caleb blended almost perfectly into the evening shadows thanks to his uniform and his bound up hair. Molly might not even have known he was there, if his hand wasn’t on his arm to steady his prince. 

Molly flashed him a grimace from under his hood, “Feels a hell of a lot longer than a year since I did this.”

Caleb’s chuckle found him even with the wind whipping around them, “But are you ready?”

He swallowed hard and nodded, feeling the truth of it on his tongue, “I’m ready.”

He went first, partly to prove to his friend that he wasn’t quite as terrified as he appeared, partly to get it over with. One step out into the dizzying expanse of the thin air, the forty or so feet between him and a messy death. The second’s worth of terror as everything dropped and the world began to accelerate around him. And the inhalation, the relief so sharp it was like a mouthful of alcohol as his hand caught the edge of the stone crenellation he’d just leapt from and he held fast. 

Molly couldn’t help it, he laughed wildly, stretching out as far as he dared into the nothingness with only the hand keeping him anchored and the flat of his boots on the pebbled wall. The wind snagged his cloak and tried to rip it away but he let it try. He felt like he could have taken flight at that moment. 

“Quiet!” Caleb whispered, as he dropped down too with much more grace, “Someone will hear us.”

Though as the wind lifted back his cowl, Molly could see he was smiling. 

The rest of the way down the wall was easy, there were pebbles and divots put into the old stone for easy handholds. In fact, it had been specifically designed so, in just this one part of the immense outer wall, with the goal of giving the royal family a secret, easy way out if they became besieged. Molly suspected that he wasn’t the only one to use it for this exact purpose, sneaking out of the palace past his curfew to go drinking with his friends. 

Once they hit the ground, they disappeared into the small grove of trees that grew around the castle as an extra line of defence and a pleasant garden for autumn walks and summer picnics. As soon as they were underneath the leaves, black in the thickening twilight, they were invisible to any guards atop the wall who might think to glance down. Molly’s heart stayed in his throat as he ran after Caleb, having to steer by the faintest flickers of his cloak hem in the almost solid blackness before him. Twigs snapped under his heels, the air was cold enough to make his throat ache and his lungs burn but the grin never slipped from his face. 

He couldn’t help it, he threw back his head and laughed wildly again, the sound bouncing off the trunks and sounding like the call of half a hundred demented birds.

It just felt so good to breathe again. 

The meeting point hadn’t changed from when they were foolish kids doing exactly this. It was the same clearing on the outer edge of the copse, on the far side so they were still hidden from the city. Molly and Caleb weren’t the first ones there, Caduceus and Fjord were already waiting for them, greeting them with the correct response to their own whistled tune, the same they’d always used so they would know it was friends approaching. The girls came after, Beau and Jester already giggling and hanging off each other, Yasha smiling as she carried Veth on her shoulders. 

Molly saw something similar to his own excited energy mirrored in his friends. Everyone seemed to feel acutely just how long it had been since they allowed themselves something like this, something that felt like a victory. 

When they were children, it would have sufficed just to stay in their little clearing, chase each other around and build forts and knock each other into the little stream. But they certainly weren’t kids any more and they knew of a different way to spend this evening. 

There was something undeniably beautiful about the kingdom’s capital, Asarius. Not many visitors would think the same upon seeing the black stone nearly everything was wrought in, its winding street that curved around the hill the city sat on and then branched off in endless alleyways and bolt holes like arteries in a body, the shiny, volcanic cobblestones that lined the streets, the stink and din of hundreds of bodies pressed close together by the city walls. But Mollymauk had always found home here. He loved the paper lanterns that swung above their heads to light the streets, the ones he risked pulling his hood back just a little so he could properly see. He loved the babble of so many voices around him, the brushes of other people’s lives as they streamed alongside his own, never realising that it was their crown prince and his retinue passing them by. He loved the many different carts each selling something exciting and delicious or, well, at least exciting. He loved the different languages, the different kinds of people, all finding their own place in Asarius. 

And one day, that place would be under his protection. Every face he passed as they walked down the main street towards the glow of red lanterns would be one of his subjects one day. One of his people. 

After the last few weeks, the thought didn’t give him the same terror as it once did. 

It had broken his heart to see the poverty festering like a disease in Asarius, the first night they’d taken wagons of food down to the poorest parts of the capital. Every city had its less well maintained streets, it’s darker, more shadowy parts, he knew this, but what he’d seen that night was outright neglect. Children with no families to go home to, curled in gutters like stray dogs. Women clutching babies to their chests in a futile attempt to give them some warmth their humble shelters couldn’t provide. An old bone being seen as a feast, hacking coughs audible from every corner, hungry, defeated eyes from the shadows. 

It was neglect. It was cruelty. And it had blossomed under his ignorance. 

He’d stepped right off the wagon on that first night, so quickly even Caleb hadn’t been able to catch his arm. He’d taken a loaf of bread from the carts of food stacked in the bed and gently approached the closest citizen, a tabaxi woman with a cub on her knee, sitting on the porch of a lopsided shack with only the city wall to keep it from tumbling over entirely. He’d gone to one knee in front of her, saw her expression turn to one of pure shock and fear as she’d realised exactly who it was. 

And as he’d pressed the loaf into her hand, he’d apologised to her. And he’d sworn his family would never forget it’s people again. 

It would not be a quick or easy fix. Molly couldn’t go with the wagons every time, as he’d wanted to at first, but he knew to push it only so far. Instead he kept the memories close to his chest, the people’s hands he’d shaken, the children whose hair he’d ruffled fondly and asked their name, the stories every elder had told him. He kept their pleas and their needs and their struggles, took them gladly on his own shoulders and made thousands of promises he intended to keep. Instead, he watched the wagons leave every week, laden with food and oil and fabric he’d purchased, and felt a little more like a prince. 

Of course, his stomach had been a solid block of ice when the subject of the charity had been brought up in the council meeting, ever so gingerly, nervous eyes darting to the king to see how he would react to news of every mouth in the slums singing his son’s praises. They’d all known, naturally, that the alms weren’t officially sanctioned, that Mollymauk had acted without his father’s permission. 

He’d been every bit as fearful to see what his father would say, he’d felt every second of that long, terrible pause tick by. But he had made himself sit back casually, one leg thrown over the arm of his chair, he’d made his eyes meet the king’s in a steady, even gaze. Only Caleb’s strong, sure presence at his side and the memories of the joy he’d brought had kept it all from crumbling. 

“Well done,” the king had eventually replied, one hand coming up to stroke his goatee, “It would seem you’ve finally found a...pet project...that interests you, son. For the time being at least. Chancellor, make sure that in future the charity is paid for by the crown treasury. Just in case my son gets bored and his attention wanders. Wouldn’t be the first time, would it, Mollymauk?”

Molly’s shoulders tightened and he felt the same tension in Caleb beside him. He was an expert in speaking his father’s language and he missed not a single word of what lurked beneath his light, joking tone. 

“Fine by me, father. You’ve got me there,” he shrugged in response, flicking his tail idly, “After all, it needs to be done. And...well, it really is a job for the king, isn’t it?”

_ I can speak it just as well as you, father, are you proud? And I won’t forget what you did. I’m sure you’ll return the favour. _

Molly knew some kind of retribution would be coming. But he wouldn’t think about that tonight. Not when the red glow of the lanterns up above was cutting through the gathering night and there was music on the air and the smell of alcohol, a wide variety of perfumes and sparking fires. 

They swept into one of the taverns they’d always gone to in their younger days, one where they knew they could count on some discrecion when they pulled their hoods back. As soon as he was under the lintel, Molly felt himself wrapped in warmth and loud, laughing voices and embraced the giddy relief inside him. 

Gods, it was so, so good to breathe again. 

He let the night run away from him, gladly. It was as if he’d never been away, finding warm, eager welcomes at the dice tables, at the bar, on the dancefloor. In every corner, people clasped his hand and thanked him for his generosity in helping Asarius find it’s pride again and said how good it was to see him back amongst them. Molly gambled freely, he bought drinks, he laughed and swapped stories with the other patrons, he flirted gamely with the servers. In flashes he saw Yasha dominating at arm wrestling competitions and winning almost as many as Jester, he saw Fjord reenacting a fight with some pirates for a captive audience, Cad was choking on some drink Veth had bought for him over at the bar, Beau was making a barmaid blush. 

He took a moment to himself, leaning against a beam and taking it all in, enjoying the ache in his jaw from smiling so much. He knew it should feel like ten years ago but, somehow, it didn’t. It felt like here and now. 

The only difference was he was happy. At this moment he was happy. 

Caleb was sitting at a table by himself which, in fairness, was exactly where he would have been ten years ago. There was, however, a small mug of beer on the table in front of him that had a few sips taken out of it at least. 

“You know, for all people hype this up,” he said as Molly approached, turning the tin mug in his hands, “I’d have expected it to taste better.”

Molly laughed, “Not seen you drinking before…”

“No,” Caleb admitted, a smile tugging on his lips, “It seemed like the night for trying something new.”

“Indeed. But how about something old?” Molly returned, suddenly shy and not hiding it on his face.

Caleb’s eyes flickered to his own, questioning. When he saw the hand Molly was extending to him, his expression shifted into something unreadable and he almost lost his nerve. 

“Would you like to dance with me, Caleb?”

After a few moments, his old friend smiled and nodded, taking his hand, “Someone might need to protect you out there after all.”

“And there’s no one I’d want more,” Molly beamed. 

The musicians were especially fine tonight, the kind of lively tavern music with laughing strings and skirling drums and bawdy lyrics everyone could join in with and slam their drinks on the table to. It was very different from the stiff backed balls that had been his only entertainment recently.

Caleb smiled nervously, “They only taught me how to waltz at the Soltryce Academy.”

“Oh, I seem to remember you not being all that bad,” Molly smiled, holding up his arm for Caleb to mirror as a bright country dance tune burst out from the corner where the musicians were pressed, “But even so, maybe you’ll get lucky and someone will try and assassinate me.”

So at least Caleb had a smile on his face as they began to dance, twirling through a loose knot of other couples like two leaves caught on an errant breeze. It was the kind of stomping, rhythmic, simple two step that left plenty of time for their gazes to linger and hands to brush across each other. 

“Not all that different from swordplay, eh?” Molly teased, his voice low under the music. 

“I’d rather have steel in my hand, I think,” Caleb smiled, though there was something brittle about it, like he was making his mouth do the movements while his eyes were elsewhere. 

When they swapped places, Molly looked around with a moment’s anxiousness. Was he about to be assassinated on a dancefloor? But the place looked much the same as it had before, his friends still mixing and laughing and drinking, part of the warm tapestry of everything. 

“I wanted to say thank you,” Molly put in gently, to try and distract him from whatever was causing his anxiety, letting something inside him open up, “Tonight has been...well, it’s been wonderful. It’s been the best night I’ve had in so long and...between this and you opening my eyes to what was going on in my own city, I feel like I’ve remembered who I am. And not just that, I’m becoming someone I actually want to be, ever since you’ve come home. You were right, whatever it looks like, my life is better with you.”

He’d said more than he’d meant to but the night was just so perfect and it had just been so long since he’d felt so free and so like himself, so far from everything he’d been feeling under his father’s thumb. It was like a deep hunger was finally being sated. 

And when the dance brought Caleb and Molly back together and he saw the tears in his eyes, it all came crashing down. 

“Fuck…” Molly cursed, stopping dead even as the music kept going and the world kept turning, “Oh fuck, Caleb I’m so sorry...that was too much, I shouldn’t just have rambled on like that.” 

“No,” Caleb shook his head, a slight tremble in his hands, “Gods help me, it’s not that, it’s the opposite…”

“Caleb…” Molly breathed, the giddiness from before now a sickening emptiness. Suddenly the lights seemed too bright and the music too loud, the laughter around the room now aimed at him. 

The rest of the world caught up with them in a sharp, sudden lurch. Cold wind poured through the door which had been thrown wide. Framed in now harsh red light was one of the royal messengers, their eyes wide and the set of their mouth grim. 

“Word from the palace,” their voice sounded through the room like a death knell, “A curfew is in effect from this moment forth, all citizens of Asarius must return to their homes and clear the streets. The Jagenoths have invaded our northern shore.”

The pronouncement was greeted with silence and stares, the kind of silence that followed the sound of ice cracking underfoot. Molly was so aware of the eyes on him, the weight of their shock as they looked to their prince. 

From across the bar, he saw his little sister mouth his name, the naked fear on her face. 

He found he had no comfort to give them. He’d had the floor ripped out from under him, just the same as the rest of them. All he could think of was the way his father had smiled at him across the council table, the hardness in his eyes. 

He wasn’t surprised when the words finally came from the messenger. 

“The kingdom is officially at war.” 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With war declared across the kingdom and one of the biggest threats his people have ever faced looming closer by the day, Mollymauk needs to grow up fast. A difficult task, when mistakes of the past keep coming back to haunt him and Caleb.
> 
> Warning: this chapter includes a description of physical scars caused by whipping, mentions of physical and mental abuse

There was a summons waiting for him in his chambers but Mollymauk never saw it. He knew where to find his father. 

“Caleb, with me,” he heard himself say as they stopped outside of the king’s council chamber, though his voice felt like an echo in an empty room, “Yasha, stay with Jester for me and my mother, if you can find her. Fjord to the docks, I need information, go and talk to whoever you can to find out what my father won’t tell me. Caduceus, same from the temples please. Beau, I need you to look into the city’s defences and armouries, find me any gaps and tell me how we can plug them fast.”

They all moved quickly, each of them seized with the same fear driven energy he felt in his own nerves. All but his sister, who stayed rooted to the spot, her eyes fixed on him and swimming in the candlelight. 

“I should go with you…” she began without much hope in her voice. 

Molly put his hands on her shoulders, “He...he won’t be in the best of moods, Jessie. Let me speak to him, I’ll come and tell you everything as soon as I know what’s happening.”

Still she didn’t move, trembling slightly like she couldn’t bear to break his hold. When had she gotten tall enough to nearly look him in the eye?

“You’re going to have to go away, aren’t you?” she whispered sorrowfully. 

Molly opened his mouth, then quickly closed it, realising for the first time that she was right. He was the crown prince. He would have a battle command. He who deliberately breezed through the palace in see through silks, flirting and joking and glittering his way through everything and actively avoided being taken seriously so no one would think to look too close and see the cracks underneath. He was going to have to lead an army. 

He made himself take a breath in, working his lungs like a set of bellows. Judging by the look on Jester’s face, she wasn’t much fooled by the smile he pinned in place. 

“We’ll sort it out,” he said firmly, squeezing her shoulders, “Go find mother and look after her for me, you’re the only one who can make her smile.”

He caught Yasha’s eye as she put an arm around Jester and led her gently back down the hallway. The smile slipped off like an ill fitting dress. Things were very, very bad and there was so little that any of them could do about it now. 

Molly turned to the heavy oak doors and sighed. The rest of the night up until this moment felt like some dream, something he’d read about in a fairytale once. He couldn’t decide if he was grateful for the last taste of freedom and joy or if it only made it hurt worse. 

As his shoulder, Caleb edged a little closer, reminding Molly that as still and dead and silent as everything felt, he wasn’t alone. His heart ached to know what he’d been about to say as they’d danced together but he knew now it was the silly, selfish want of someone who didn’t have to keep a broken kingdom together with his fingertips. 

But Mollymauk was glad to have him by his side right now. 

The news didn’t seem to have roused the king from any slumber. He was at the head of the council table, blue eyes sharp and aware, his jaw tight enough to crack teeth. His council members were the ones who looked like they’d been dragged from their beds, clucking and squawking over each other in robes and hastily thrown on cloaks, faces slack with sleep and fear. 

“Father,” Molly cut through the clamour with a strength in his voice that he didn’t feel, “You and I need to talk.” 

“It would seem that way,” his father answered, effortlessly casual, “Clear the room. My son would like to be brought up to speed.” 

It happened quickly, it would seem that no one was eager to linger here. Once they were alone, Molly made himself look the king in the eye and squared his shoulders. 

“The Jagenoths, father? You couldn’t have picked a less bloodthirsty kingdom to antagonise?”

The king’s eyes were piercing as they fixed on him and he gave a dismissive grunt, rising to go refill his goblet from the flagon of red that was always kept close at hand. 

“Precisely what this kingdom needs right now. More jokes and witticisms from it’s heir…”

Molly flared, “Apologies, father. It's so hard to keep track of what you want me to actually take seriously and what you’d rather keep me blind to.” 

His father’s shoulders tensed, his voice deadly quiet and movements precise as he looked out through the window over the restless city, “Is this a conversation you want to have now, son? Right now?”

“No,” Molly admitted, catching the brief warning glance from Caleb at his side and forcing himself to calm, “The conversation I want to have is how the fuck we’re at war all of a sudden with absolutey no warning. I mean, for crying out loud, father, the Jagenoths were at the fucking harvest ball this year.”

“Do you now, Mollymauk? You wouldn’t rather slope off to your apartments with your colourful gaggle of friends and pretend this all isn’t happening? I could leave this all to my seasoned generals...” 

Molly swallowed hard, feeling an old tremble run through his fingers. Gods, it shouldn't have been as tempting as it was. Beside him, taking advantage of the king’s turned back, Caleb gave him a steady nod. 

“No,” Molly’s voice was firm, “You either take me as your heir- all of me, even the parts you don’t like- or you let me go. And being your heir means having your trust. Do I have your trust, father?”

The pause could have been a lifetime for how heavily it weighed on Mollymauk’s shoulders. But eventually, the king turned, his face unreadable. 

“I have had several...investments in Shady Creek Run over the years. Ones that have turned sour of late and apparently the Jagenoths aren’t willing to settle it like businessmen. They would rather settle it with blood and steel.”

Molly gaped at him, “What kind of investments are worth invading a kingdom?”

His father simply looked at him with that same inscrutable expression, waiting. Eventually the realisation bled into Molly’s mind and his shoulders slumped. There was only one kind of business that was done in Shady Creek Run. 

“You’ve been smuggling.  _ You.” _

“Now, son-”

“No!” Molly’s dismay could pass enough as reckless bravery that he bulled over his father, unwilling to listen to another word. He shook his head, stunned, “You, who’ve been going on and on at me for so long about upholding the godsdamned family honour, have been working with fucking pirates and smugglers? Have mercy, father, are you a king or a crime lord?”

“Hold your damn tongue!” Babenon snapped, face hardening, “Remember who you speak to son, with that tone of self righteousness. You know nothing of what I face every single day to keep you in your finery, the things I’ve had to do to keep the walls of this city standing! You know  _ nothing  _ of being king!” 

Molly flinched, he couldn’t help it, bending under the weight of that voice and those eyes. Beside him, he felt Caleb tense and shift his feet. And suddenly, Sorah was there, looming from the shadows that had cloaked her, fingers flexing in warning. 

Molly swallowed and bowed his head, the bravery collapsing in on itself, hollow after all, “Forgive me, father. I...I just fear for what’s going to happen now. For my city and my friends. I’ve heard stories of the Jagenoth, of Lorenzo. They say he’s ruthless.”

“He’s all you’ve heard and more, son,” there was a softer, more satisfied tone to his voice now he’d won, “But so is your father. Do exactly as I say and we will make certain he never sets eyes on Asarius.”

Molly nodded, crossing his hands behind his back and feeling the ghost of a stinging slap against one cheek.  _ I’ve never doubted how ruthless you are, father. I just never imagined you were so foolish.  _

“Perhaps I have been unfair to you, son,” Babanon mused after a long pull from his goblet, “Your leash has been kept short of late while I waited for some sign you had truly grown out of your immature ways. But your interest in the city’s charitable needs and the love you’ve won from our citizens could be of use to me, especially now our kingdom must close ranks against these invaders. This is the energy I needed to see from you...if I direct it in the correct manner.”

Molly’s eyes flickered up to his father’s. 

“It is time for those swords to become more than pretty ornaments at your hip, I think. Our master at arms speaks highly of your skill and you have a close knit group of allies who trust you. And with a fine Volstruker at your side, one our good friend Ikithon values so highly, you could cut quite the intimidating figure, a pretty show of our house’s strength..” 

Molly frowned, doubtful, “We’re going to  _ barter  _ with the Iron Shephard?”

“Babenon Dosal does not barter, Mollymauk,” the king’s smile became something hungry, “We are going to crush him.”

There was so little time to think. 

Molly felt like he was barely holding on, thrown from one emergency council session to another, bounced between strategy meetings and drill training, from an argument about supplies to one about conscription. Things went by in scattershot fragments he could hardly hold on to. It was all just worried eyes, tight mouths, questions no one dared ask. He found himself making rousing speeches in front of formed up soldiers that just two days ago had been dyer’s apprentices, washerwomen, pot boys and stablehands. And in a week’s time, if he couldn’t find a way through this, they would be corpses.

The days until they rode out turned to smoke on the wind. In simultaneously no time at all and more years than he thought he’d ever seen, it was the eve of their departure. Tomorrow morning, the city would watch them ride out of the gates, throw flowers and wave the royal heraldry, call them heroes, all while either ignorant of or willfully blind to the fact that every tragedy this war would fall on them was because of the people they cheered. It was that, rather than any nerves, that made his stomach clench in nausea. 

The prospect of the goodbyes he now had to make didn’t help. 

Molly took his time down the steps to the courtyard. A cold wind was blowing, as it had seemed to ever since the news came, and he shivered in the training clothes and the sheen of sweat he wore. His mother, at least, was wrapped in fur as she stood by the carriage, the hood pulled low over her face. Few people were supposed to know of her leaving, lest it be too obvious that the king was planning for the worst, for all the bravado and easy confidence in his speeches. 

“You should be in the carriage, mother,” Molly said gently as he approached her, close enough that he could see the glint of her eyes under the fur, “No need to be out in the wind.” 

“I have more to worry about than the weather, little amethyst,” Queen Marion turned her head slightly to look at him as he stopped at her shoulder, “You have been in the practise yard again?”

Molly shrugged, “I’m packed and ready to ride at dawn. Not much else to fill the hours and Beau always tells me a minute’s worth of practice can make the difference in a fight.”

He’d hoped to give her some courage, some confidence in his ability to protect himself, but in the shadow of the hood her handsome face turned tight and anxious, “Are you sure you can’t be left as castellan? Surely your presence is needed here…”

Molly smiled grimly, “Jester is every bit as capable as I am. She’s so much smarter than everyone gives her credit for.”

“I don’t doubt her,” Marion shook her head, “But allow a mother her selfish wishes to keep her children out of harm's way.”

Molly reached across the distance between them and squeezed her hand inside the folds of her cloak. No matter the circumstances of his birth, no matter how frayed and difficult things grew between him and the king, Marion had never once treated him as anything but a beloved son. 

“I’m of age, mother. Now it’s my turn to selfishly protect you. You’ll be safe back in Nicodranas...it must at least be some comfort to see the city again?”

“I have wanted to return for a long time,” Marion sighed, her tone careful with the weight of all her marriage had become behind it, the arguments and the distance and the coldness, “But not like this.”

“I’ll see it one day,” Molly promised, “Soon. After the war, even, I’ll come and get you and you can show me and Jessie all of it.” 

Her thumb ran over his scarred knuckles and she smiled the kind of smile a mother gave her child when they were telling her some fancy, “I would like that...where is Caleb? I so rarely see you without him these days.”

“He went to go and collect our maps from the library. We’ll be going into the forests and even with Caduceus on hand, it’s best to have the routes laid out,” Molly explained, trying to smile comfortingly and sound jovial, “We’re only looking to loop around the border and turn back any other raiding parties. Father’s the one riding to face Lorenzo head on. Likely the war will be won and done by the time we catch up with him. We’ll find the old man throwing victory feasts in the ashes, no doubt.” 

Marion’s expression didn’t change. She never had been taken in by his affectations the way everyone else seemed to be. 

“Just promise me you’ll come through safely,” she murmured, “And...keep Caleb by you. The two of you are stronger together.” 

A pinkess rose on Molly’s cheeks that had nothing to do with the cold, “Mother…”

“Just promise me,” Marion sighed, “I worry about you less when I know he’s with you.” 

“Of course,” he said quickly, “I mean, he’s my...he’s my guard. He was trained for things like this. Where else would he be?”

Marion made a soft noise that was neither agreement or dissent, “Yes. His training. Of course.”

“Get on the carriage, Mother,” Mollymauk groaned. 

At least she had a smile on her face as she leaned up to kiss his cheek, even if it couldn’t last as he helped her onto the carriage and stood to wave as it disappeared through the castle gates towards the docks. As soon as she was gone, a mournful kind of quiet seemed to settle around the place. 

One down. 

Jester’s bedroom was right next to his own, it always had been even though the royal apartments allowed for much more of their own space. They’d just never wanted to be any further from each other. 

When he knocked and pushed back the door, he saw her at her desk under the window. Whenever something was upsetting her, his sister could usually be found painting. But this time, as he came closer, he saw it wasn’t paper and well worn watercolours spread around her. It was account books, ledgers, dusty old things she’d clearly dredged up from some corner of the seneschal’s office. 

“Trying to put yourself to sleep?” he hummed, standing behind her chair.

Jester sighed, the edge of her cheek that he could see past her hair flushing pink, “I’m just...I’m going to be in charge after you and father leave tomorrow. I want to make sure I do a good job.” 

Molly sighed gently and passed his hand over her hair, “You will, Jessie. Father wouldn’t be doing it if he didn’t trust you.”

She made a rude, rather un-princess like noise, “He has no choice. Mama’s gone and tomorrow so will you…”

“He could ask me to stay,” Molly said firmly, deftly pulling her hair back into a braid, “Mother could be staying here in the castle. But he isn’t. He’s putting our capital into your hands because he knows how smart you are and how much you care. He knows you’re the kind of princess the people need right now.”

Under his fingers, Jester shifted and sighed, eventually unable to bear it any more and whirling around, launching herself upwards and clasping her arms around him hard enough to hurt. 

“It just won’t be the same without you,” she whispered thickly. 

Molly swallowed hard to keep his own tears out of his voice, “I’ll miss you, Jester. But it won’t be long until we see each other again, I promise.” 

He let her tremble and sniffle for as long as she needed to, before pulling back to kiss her head, right between her horns. 

“Come now. I’ll miss the whole bloody battle, the route father’s got me taking all around the borders. Nothing to worry about.” 

“Nothing to worry about,” Jester repeated. Molly hoped he’d sounded more convincing than she did. 

“And no putting TravelerCon down as an official holiday while no one’s looking,” he teased, jostling her lightly, “Or if you do, make sure it’s when I’m back.” 

Jester giggled, wiping her eyes on her sleeve before flushing lightly pink and dropping her gaze from his, “Okay...um...make sure Beau and Yasha come back safe for me?”

Molly smirked, “Oh? What makes you say that, little sister?”

“Shut up!” she punched his arm, fighting a smile, “Just do it.”

“Okay, okay,” he chuckled, “Though it’ll more likely be the two of them dragging my skinny ass out of trouble.”

“Good...and stick with Caleb.” 

Now it was Molly’s turn to feel his cheeks warm, “Have you and mother been talking about me by any chance?”

“I’m not saying anything! I’m not making a single connection between you and him riding off to war together and the fifty million smut books that start in pretty much exactly the same way…”

Molly wrinkled his nose, “Please do not tell me how you know that.”

“Worried I stole yours from under your pillow?” 

“You little…” he flicked her nose lightly before the real emotions began to well up through the cracks and he didn’t have the energy to maintain his smile any more, “Caleb’s...he’s just been hurt so bad, Jessie. And so much of it is because of me. If I put him through anything like that again, I couldn’t forgive myself.”

“That implies you forgave yourself last time,” Jester raised her eyebrows before her expression softened, “And what happened wasn’t your fault. Caleb loved you back, it went bad because of that asshole Ikithon and...and yeah, because of father.”

Molly grimaced a little, feeling the weight of those bad memories on his already frayed patience, “I just don’t want to cause him any more pain. What they did to him...he’s not the same Caleb from ten years ago. Trying to force him to be won’t do anything but hurt him more.” 

“True,” Jester allowed, “But he also isn’t the Caleb who arrived at the gate six months ago, is he?” 

Molly bit his lip, “No…”

“And you’re not Molly from ten years ago. So why can’t the Molly you are now and the Caleb he is now fall in love with each other?”

Molly opened his mouth and closed it again, shaking his head, “I...I just don’t see how it can be that simple. With father and Ikithon and now all of this.” 

Jester frowned, “And when you’re king? And they’re gone?”

Molly felt a tightness in his ribs, the ache of want trying to force its way up through old hurts. But the idea that there could ever be a world where the kind of hate and the kind of evil that had pulled him and Caleb apart didn’t exist wasn’t one he dared hope for. How could he, when he was too much of a coward to stand up to it? When he was being raised to put on a crown and keep it all going?

“There might not even be a kingdom for me to inherit if I don’t focus on what’s in front of me,” he shook his head firmly, “I can’t think about it right now.”

Jester seemed to deflate a little but the knowing look didn’t fade from her eyes, “Fine. Focus on coming back safe.”

He ruffled her hair, “You know I will. I’ve gotten this far flying by the seat of my pants, haven’t I?”

“Yeah,” Jester smiled up at him, leaning up to kiss his cheek, “Just don’t do anything too stupid.”

“A novel concept for me. But for you, Jester, I’ll try.”

He wasn’t planning on sleeping that night but Beau had explicitly barred him from her training ground, saying that if she saw him there rather than in his bed then Lorenzo wouldn’t even get the chance to run him through. Telling her that they’d be riding the wrong bloody way for that to happen didn’t seem to change her mind about the threat. 

So he’d bid Caleb goodnight, again feeling everything unsaid between them pressing in at the edge of his words and telling himself another time. Now he lay on his back in the middle of his expansive, empty bed, waiting for a restfulness that he knew deep down would never come, staring at the ceiling until his eyes blurred and unfocused. His fingers itched for the smooth leather of his sword hilts but now, every time he imagined picking them up, he would see them lunging forward of their own free will, slicing through flesh and jarring against bone, blood running down their curved steel. He tried to imagine actually taking the life of another person, facing a foe not made of magic or sand and trying to summon the will to snuff out their existence as easily as blowing out a candle.

All Mollymauk could feel was a sickness in his stomach. 

He rolled over, sighing as he pulled the blankets tighter around him to fight off the shivers. He couldn’t decide if the soft, dry sobs he heard were his imaginary victim’s or his own inside his mind, echoing back from a future he didn’t want. 

Until he realised it was neither. They were coming from behind the hidden door and the veil of magic, they were coming from Caleb’s chamber.

Molly sat up, tail twitching, blankets slipping down to pool around his hips. His instinct was of course to run to him without hesitation, to slide in next to him and hold him and listen while he said all of the things he could never say outside of the circle of his arms. But that was what he would have done before. 

Jester’s words came back to him. They weren’t the same Molly and Caleb and maybe, as they were now, they’d never be able to build something like what had come before. But he still cared for him, deeply, and he wasn’t about to lie there uselessly while his friend sobbed in the room next door, not after he’d comforted him before. 

He pulled a robe on and padded quickly over to the door behind the tapestry, the stone floor cold under his bare soles between the thick carpets. Only he could enter without Caleb’s permission, the magic was designed to let him through as the one who’s life Caleb was bound to. But still, he knocked, hardly about to barge into the only space in the entire world that was Caleb’s alone. 

His first knock didn’t stop the sobs, he had to try again and louder before they choked off and a voice came, raw and quiet. 

“Mollymauk?”

“Caleb,” he answered, mouth pulling down at the fear in his friend’s voice, “Please let me in?”

“You...my prince, you should be sleeping…”

Molly sighed, resting his forehead against the stone door, “Caleb, I want to. Please?”

After a long pause, the door slipped from its seamless place in the wall, pushing inwards so Molly had to quickly right himself to avoid ending up in a heap on Caleb’s floor. The cell was pitch black, only the ragged, panicked breathing to guide him towards the pallet his friend slept on. 

“Shh, Caleb, it was only a dream,” he moved slowly, giving him every chance to draw away and cling to his space but he didn’t. 

One moment there was musty air under his hand and then there was soft hair, clammy, sweat soaked skin. Caleb didn’t pull back, he didn’t flinch. Giving thanks for that much, Molly awkwardly fumbled in the dark until he was sat on Caleb’s narrow bed, scratchy wool under his other hand, shaped to the trembling pair of legs underneath it. 

“Just focus on breathing, okay?” Molly whispered, stroking the hair he knew was that deep, coppery red even if he couldn’t see it, “It’ll fade, I promise.”

He felt Caleb nod, one of his hands coming up to lie over Molly’s, clinging to it the way a drowning man would cling to driftwood. It happened quickly and easily after that, like falling asleep. Who moved against who, it was hard to say, like the transition moment between there being space between them and not hadn’t happened. Like Molly had always been embracing Caleb, had always had him weeping softly into his shoulder while one hand’s fingers interlaced with his own. 

It felt like finally exhaling. 

It would have lasted as long as Molly could make it, if his other hand hadn't eventually slipped down from Caleb’s shoulder to his back, intending to stroke slow, easy circles there just as he’d always done when they’d held each other in the night, as they’d done the first time they’d kissed, as they’d done the first and last time he’d felt Caleb’s body gently press into his own and everything had made sense. 

It would have lasted forever if Molly hadn’t done that. If he hadn’t felt the raised, puckered scars under his palm. 

He froze, breath catching in his throat. Caleb knew immediately what had happened and tried to pull back, tried to pull the blankets up over his torso but Molly moved faster, hand slipping further to feel just how many there were, how raised and poorly healed and angry they were, before their embrace was broken. 

“Caleb,” Molly’s voice was low and level, “Turn on the lights, please.”

He saw the dark shape that was his friend shake it’s head, heard his miserable whimper. 

He swallowed hard, forcing his voice to stay calm, measured, “Caleb, you’re safe with me, I promise. I just need to see. It isn’t an order, I’m only asking you to please trust me.”

If he had asked him to leave at that moment, to forget everything and shut the door behind him, Molly would have gone and he prayed Caleb knew that. Without so much as a word, the bare, unscented candle by the bed ignited and, trembling, Caleb turned his back on Mollymauk. 

It took everything he had not to make a sound at the ruin of Caleb’s back. 

Scars crossed over other scars, the messiest, most tangled delta of rivers Molly had ever seen and he understood now why he’d never seen Caleb without a shirt on since his return, they would have been impossible to hide otherwise. They were raised, almost blistered around the edges, horrible jagged things that had clearly been salted before they were given any treatment. 

Molly didn’t need to ask what had made them. Or who had done it. 

“Please don’t be angry, your highness,” Caleb’s voice was thin and reedy, again slipping into the cadence of an actor, albeit one who feared execution if his performance didn’t satisfy, “It was my fault, they only whipped me when I was bad.” 

“Caleb,” his voice broke, eyes stinging, “Gods, what could have been worth doing this to you? No matter what they might have said, this was not your fault, this was their sick idea of punishment…”

“No, it was, it was my fault!” Caleb trembled, “They told me and they didn’t listen, they told me and I still opened the letters-”

Something inside Molly froze and splintered, “The...the letters? The letters I wrote you? They got you whipped?”

They’d been a desparate act from the beginning, he’d known that. But he’d just been so heartbroken, so wracked with grief and tortured by his own thoughts of what they must have been doing to Caleb at the Academy, what blood price he was paying for their one night together. The letters and the gold he’d pressed into merchant’s palms to have them smuggled into Rexxantrum and past the impenetrable walls of the Academy, he’d been realistic about how likely it was that they’d ever get into Caleb’s hands. But he’d just been unable to sit and do nothing, to imagine Caleb thinking he’d been forgotten. After a year or so, he’d stopped, fearing the worst and unable to keep the hope alive. 

And all the while he’d been writing those awful scars across his back. 

“I shouldn’t have opened them, they told me after the first one, it was my choice,” Caleb wept, “I had to learn, they said…”

“Gods, Caleb,” Molly tasted bile on his throat, “Why...why did you open them? Why didn’t you write back and tell me to stop, I would have stopped, I never, ever wanted to hurt you more, oh gods…”

Caleb pushed a hand through his hair, unable to answer for a while before his shoulders slumped in defeat. The scripted tone of his voice fell away, like a thin mask crumbling to dust, “I...I missed you so much and reading your words, it helped me keep a hold on myself. It stopped me losing who I was entirely. I didn’t  _ want  _ them to stop.” 

It was strangely easy to sound calm now, the fury brought an odd kind of clarity, a separation he welcomed in that moment, “Thank you for showing me your scas, Caleb, hat was very brave of you. You stay here and get some rest.”

“Where are you going?” Caleb turned, still shaking with tremors that ran through his body endlessly. 

“I’m going to cut Trent Ikithon’s throat while he sleeps,” Molly replied simply, like he was telling him he planned to take a spring hunt tomorrow, “A pity to give him such an easy death but can’t risk it.”

Caleb groaned, staggering up and grabbing his arm, “Molly, please, no…”

It was so hard to hear him over the crackling fire in his stomach, “It won’t take a moment, Caleb, I promise.” 

“You can’t! You have no idea what kind of magic he has, he’ll hurt you!”

“He can fucking try,” Molly’s calm was cracking, the fire spreading, “I won’t suffer that bastard to take another breath under my roof, not after everything he’s done to you. First the crystals when you were just a kid and now this? I’m done, he crossed the line a long bloody time ago.” 

“But your father…”

“My father can go fuck himself!” Molly roared then, the rage snapping up and wresting away the last of his composure, bouncing his voice off the walls, “He’s as much to blame! He feeds that monster like some kind of pet, he funds him and gives him that tower room to do gods know what! He’s lied to be, he’s hurt people, he’s made so many people miserable for his own gain and he wants me to be just like him! Well he’s getting exactly what he wanted.”

He moved fast enough that Caleb couldn’t keep him in place. Once again everything was rushing past him like some great hurricane, the only thing he could be certain of was the swords he took from the wall, their reassuring weight. Now he actively imagined blood running down their edge, beading on their wicked tips like rubies. He told himself how right it felt and the anger roared it’s approval. 

But then Caleb was in front of him, hands on his chest, eyes wide and terrified, “Mollymauk, I’m begging you not to do this.”

“This is how my father would settle this,” Molly snapped, eyes blazing. 

“But you’re not your father.”

That alone reached through the fire inside him and brought him out into the cold. Startled back into his own mind, Molly took a deep, shuddering breath and let the swords fall from his grip, now slack and useless. They hit the floor with a muffled thud. 

“You’re not, Mollymauk,” Caleb continued, relief flooding into his eyes, “You’re none of them, you’re different. And that’s why you’re the only hope any of us have. You were my hope, back then, back when they were doing everything they could to break me. And now...now you’re the kingdom’s hope. And they can’t lose that.”

Molly’s face crumbled, shoulders starting to shake, “I just hate what they did to you…” 

“Me too,” Caleb murmured, “But day by day I’m pulling myself back from it and it’s all thanks to you. I just need time, Molly, that’s all.”

“Okay,” he whispered, even as his voice broke, “I can wait. As long as you need me to.”

This time it wasn’t Caleb holding him or him holding Caleb. They held each other, as tightly as they could, clinging on as the dark tide rose around them and everything changed outside the door. 

If they were granted a tomorrow, Molly promised himself, they would make it a good one. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caleb watches his prince flounder through this war he didn't start and realises the only way he can truly help him.
> 
> TW: I feel like the mentions of violence increase in this chapter. I mean, Lorenzo's here now. so. you know.

The forests were as silent as they had been the last time Caleb went through them. A fierce wind was whistling out on the moors and there was even some snow on the air just beyond their close knit embrace but, under the thick canopy, it was as if it didn’t exist. It was as if the world didn’t exist. The bitter air and slate grey clouds, it had all been swallowed by the leaves and the bark. 

Caleb remembered how they’d swallowed his sobs the same way, the last time he had passed through here. 

He stroked his horse’s neck as he rose further up in the saddle to look ahead through the trees. Though he hated leading Mollymauk’s side, his prince had insisted he be part of the scouts, saying he had the best eyes in the company. And anything Caleb could do to help right now, he would not leave it undone. They couldn’t afford to.

It was peaceful, at least. He had lost the hour in the silence, it was all just darkness and quiet and the beat of his own heart in his lungs. Even his horse’s hooves made no noise in the soft forest floor, carpeted in moss and pine needles. He would never have even known an entire company of armed warriors shared these trees with him. He could have been the only person on the planet. 

Which meant no threats in sight as well, nothing his eyes or ears could pick up even in the stillness. Caleb cast a searching spell forward just to be sure but the only sparks of life were the nests in the boughs up above and a family of foxes curled up in their den. No hidden enemies to speak of. Not a hidden archer in the leaves or a sword wielding scout behind a trunk.

Which, inexplicably, didn’t sit well with Caleb. He frowned and passed a hand over his horse’s neck again, to comfort the animal and, partly, to comfort himself. Unease had settled heavily in the bottom of his stomach on the very first day they’d ridden out from Asarius, a weight that had only grown as this campaign went on. 

They’d all flashed so prettily in the sun that day, as the light had caught and turned to red silk pennants on the tips of their spears, Mollymauk in a suit of plate enamelled in purple and looking more a god than a prince, though a god that stopped to wink at maidens and accept flowers from their hands, who ruffled the hair of children who ran alongside their column, who passed jokes back and forth with common tradesmen. It had been more like a fair than a force riding out to war, Molly had known his role and he’d played it well. Caleb must have looked like a sour spirit, haunting his left shoulder all in black, but something had just felt so wrong that day and it felt no better now, a week on. 

He sighed, his breath misting in the damp air. No one but a Volstruker would be morose at not meeting a single enemy yet. 

Maybe it was just being here that put the tension in his stomach. This was the path they’d taken back into the empire ten years ago, after his...his disgrace. The word didn’t come to him as easily as it one had, the shame wasn’t so quick to rise. It was an old misery he felt, the memory of the loss and despair, how it had opened a pit inside his younger self to think he’d never see Mollymauk ever again. He ached for that young wizard, in pain and confused and so scared, chained in the back of a cart and bouncing painfully along to a fate he didn’t want to imagine waiting for him in Rexxantrum, crying to a love that couldn’t hear him and trees that paid no mind. 

_ He deserved it, a _ voice that sounded like a whip crack hissed in the back of his mind, curling Caleb’s lip,  _ he deserved that awful fate.  _

But the voice was distant, like it wasn’t coming from inside him but behind him. Caleb swallowed down a faint taste of bile and answered it vaguely  _ it certainly was an awful fate.  _ That would satisfy it for now. 

He was getting better at it. Feeding the thoughts that had been placed inside him to fester and grow, giving them just enough and no more, aware of the distance between them and his own. It was a difficult game, one that could hurt him very easily, one he had to play with steady hands and cautious nature. Two things that Volstruker training had, fortunately, gifted him with. 

Caleb took a deep lungful of the air and thought of that boy again, weeping softly and steadily in the back of that cart, unable to stop no matter how many blows his tears earned him. Unwilling to stop. 

I’m getting better at it, he promised the boy. 

Caleb patted his horse’s neck and turned back towards the column. He’d seen enough. 

The tents had sprouted up like strange canvas mushrooms under the shelter of the trees. Good, flat ground was scarce so they were more scattered than Caleb would have liked, clusters of them growing together rather than as one cohesive unit. Too much space for any intruder to thread through and reach the heart of the camp. 

But the tents were already coming down as he rode hard back through the outer ring of defences, the company waking up to begin another day of marching. Perhaps there would be better ground up ahead. Perhaps they would finally break through the trees. 

And what would be waiting for them when they did?

No one called out to Caleb as he dismounted by the hastily strung up horse paddock, no one offered a greeting or asked about his ranging. Soldiers merely talked around him, laughing and joking and grumbling to each other as they woke up and rubbed the sleep from their eyes, acting if he wasn’t there. Caleb didn’t mind, he was used to it and there was no real malice in their disengagement. Something about his black uniform of office and the rumours that clung to it turned idle conversation away, it was the whole point of wearing it. That was the whole point of being Volstruker. 

“Rest now, Frumpkin,” he murmured softly to his horse, patting their neck, “I need to go make my report but I’ll come back and see you get a good rub down before we have to set off.”

“Gods, you’re not still calling the poor animal that name, are you?”

Caleb turned to see Beau leaning against one of the posts hastily driven into the forest floor, smirking at him. She was dressed in a cold weather version of her usual monk robes, more parts reinforced with leather for better protection. No one was taking any risks on this campaign but it was still strange to see the old friends he’d last known as children dressed for war.

He was glad they hadn’t had to grow up as quickly as he did, that they could still be considered too young for this. 

“Why would I call him anything else?” Caleb answered smoothly, “It’s his name.”

“One of the finest horses I’ve seen come out of the palace’s stables and you saddle him with a name like Frumpkin. It’s an insult.”

The corner of Caleb’s mouth twitched into a smile that he dampened. He didn’t need to smile around Beau, he never had. She’d always taken him as he was and was the first of them all to slip back into doing so after he’d come back. While the others were still unsure how to fit him back into the place the old Caleb had occupied in their lives, Beau was cursing him and scowling at him and punishing him in the training yard like she always had done. Perhaps it was easier when what you had wasn’t the conventional idea of being friendly. 

Whatever the reason, Caleb was grateful for it. 

“Thank you for keeping him for me all these years,” he said quietly, putting a gentle hand on the horse’s flank. 

“Stubborn beast wouldn’t take anyone but you,” Beau shrugged, “Like rider, like horse, it’s the same as ever.”

Caleb grunted, “Where’s the prince?”

“In the command tent,” Beau rolled her eyes as she said it and for good reason. The idea of the Mollymauk they all knew in charge of armed soldiers was absurd, however good the act he’d been putting on for everyone else was, “Anything to see out there?”

“Nothing,” Caleb said, “Nothing but the wildlife whose homes we’re trampling through.” 

“I’m starting to think the Jagenoths keep their brains in their damn swords,” Beau frowned, “Did they seriously send out an invading army but didn’t think to put at least some force on the borders?”

“The Jagenoths don’t,” Caleb said, voice flat and serious, “And they wouldn’t.”

“So we’re missing something,” Beau followed the thread of his thoughts easily and liked it no more than he had. 

“We are. And we will not be ready for it when it comes.”

With that grim assessment, he began walking through the croppings of tents, making for the one at the centre with the royal standard looking rather forlorn outside it’s entrance, no wind to lift it. Caleb did not want to scare his friends and doubt his prince but his strategic mind was in despair at everything he saw around him. They were nearly as short on weaponry as they were the hands to wield them, food as the mouths to eat it, the bulk of the royal army’s resources having gone with the king to meet the main Jagenoth force. 

Or, as it appeared at the moment, the only Jagenoth force. Caleb would have loved to believe that. 

He’d wanted to be back before his prince woke up but he’d not been sleeping well and was already up and at his desk when Caleb ducked under the flap. When Molly saw him standing there framed in predawn light, the frustration and helplessness in his red rimmed eyes eased into relief. He knew he didn’t need to pretend in front of Caleb. 

“It’s good to see you back,” he exhaled, “Any news?”

“Nothing,” Caleb put his hands behind his back, standing tall and drawn, “The forest ahead is clear, no sign of any enemy out postings or even anything to suggest a large group of armed soldiers are approaching from the border. No smoke, no hoofprints, not so much as a flattened fern.” 

Molly frowned, setting down his quill, “The border? How far did you ride out, Caleb?”

“Three hours out, your majesty.”

Molly groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose, “Gods, Caleb, that's so far. If you’d gotten into trouble, no one would have seen your signal, you’d have been on your own!”

“If I had the enemy would be down as many as they’d seen fit to set against me,” Caleb said evenly, “And we would know more about what they are planning than we do know.” 

Molly didn’t seem to think that justified the risk, still frowning down at the map in front of him, eyes tracing the path Caleb must have taken on his scouting run. 

“Just...don’t do it again. Please. I know we’ve not run into any trouble yet but if the first time we did was you getting hurt or...just don’t, please.”

Caleb felt a stab of guilt, not the sort that came from disappointing a liege he was sworn to or disobeying an order, the deeper sort that came from causing a friend to worry. 

“I’m sorry. It just frustrates me, still knowing so little about what they’re planning. We should have at least met border patrols by now, if the Jagenoths are half of what they’re rumoured to be. If Lorenzo truly is at their head.” 

Molly grimaced, standing and moving to where his armour waited on the stand by the cot he slept on. He always waited until the very last moment to put it on while simultaneously knowing he couldn’t let any of their soldiers see him without it. Before long the captains of the night guard would be coming to give him reports and he’d run out of time to move freely and breathe comfortably. 

If they saw him without the gilded plate and the glittering swords, they might remember that they were being led by their scandal sodden rake of a prince. That act had kept Mollymauk going after Caleb had been taken from him, it had been all he’d had through his darkest moments. And now it had to be packed away like a winter coat in spring, now its absence was all that kept this company together. 

He was doing his best to hide it from their friends but the nakedness Molly felt without it, the vulnerability, was painted across his face when it was just the two of them. 

“Perhaps their bloodlust has made them stupid. Perhaps this isn’t an invasion at all, just a tithe taking. Perhaps all Lorenzo wants to see is my father’s head on a bloody pike.”

Caleb winced internally at the defeat in his voice, “Your highness…”

“Caleb, I just…” Molly shook his head, the frantic, panicked edge fading from his voice, “I’m under no illusions about what will happen when we finally do encounter enemy forces. Let me have every moment until then. And...gods, please don’t let it be you in their way.” 

Caleb exhaled, finally bowing his head, “As you wish.” 

There was a long moment as Molly held his lobstered gauntlets in his hands, staring down at them like he was holding hands with a stranger. He was clearly rolling something around in his mouth, words he wanted to say but couldn’t. Caleb merely waited, patient. 

“Has it been getting better?” his prince eventually murmured, pitching his voice lower as if Caleb’s intrusive thoughts were a physical presence with malicious ears, “The avoidance strategies, have they been helpful? I did worry coming through here again might be difficult for you.”

Caleb softened, managing a smile even as he still had to answer carefully, “I have found the last few days more comfortable than I expected.” 

And he wasn’t lying. Feeling pity for the boy he’d been, as painful as it was to remember that hurt, it was so much better than hating him. It was such a delicate business but having Mollymauk quietly cheering for him, listening to him as he tried to work out what sentences were acceptable and what would make his old wounds throb with remembered pain, holding him when he slipped and stepping back when the intrusive thoughts roared too loud to allow Caleb any comfort. 

In some ways, the close proximity of the camp, so much more intimate than that castle with its stone memories, was a blessing. Not many ways, but some. 

“I’m pleased, Caleb,” Molly turned away from the armour and smiled back at him, expecting nothing, just genuine in his relief, “Help me into this damnable oven of an outfit?”

“Of course,” Caleb stepped forward gladly. If any part of him were to wonder why he took so much comfort and delight in being close to Mollymauk, he would answer it smoothly and confidently. He was Volstuker, why would he not hasten to armour his prince and be certain that he was as closely protected as possible? 

Why would his heart not quicken as he slide a shirt of fine mail over Molly’s head, so carefully and deftly making sure it didn’t catch on his horns, as he sank down on one knee to carefully lace each fitted plate into place, working from the ground up until they were nose to nose? 

Molly cleared his throat as they realised neither had spoken for some time, that silence had settled in now the sounds of metal scraping on metal had silenced. He fixed a playful smile onto his face, “Now, go tend that horse of yours. If you went that far before the sun’s even in the sky, you must have ridden poor Frumpkin hard. After everything that poor boy does for you, keeping his head high with a name like that.” 

Caleb chuckled, a brighter sound than any he’d made all morning, “The name suits him, as I’ve told you all plenty of times…”

Molly nudged him gently towards the tent door, grinning, “It’s very you, I’ll give you that. I’ll see you when we ride out.” 

Caleb gave him a quick bow in answer, striding back out into the gathering dawn. His stomach felt lighter than it had since he woke. 

The days crept by with a maddening slowness as they skirted along the border of the kingdom. It was the same flat, barren landscape with it’s cropped dark grass and those black mountains in the distance cutting a ragged edge on the grey sky. It was impossible to tell what thin, pebbled soil was theirs and what was the Empire’s, the bleak sameness of the landscape doing little to honour the people who’d shed blood to forge it centuries ago. 

Caleb wondered why all his training had neglected to mention that war was an awful lot of tedious plodding forward. 

They poured over maps, they talked in the command tent long into the small hours of what would have been the morning if any of them had any concept of time anymore, debating in endless circles what the Jagenoths were planning, how the king was faring, what to do next. Molly would listen, unafraid to look exhausted and worn down in front of his friends, and eventually bring his hand down on the table for silence and give them the same, flat answer. They would do exactly as they were instructed. They would push on until they either met his father’s forces flush with victory or discovered their corpses mouldering in the dirt. 

Birds would take wing, messages would be ferried along by magic, the same report would fly every day. And every day there would be no answer. 

Caleb could tell Mollymauk felt abandoned. But he also knew it wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling to his prince. 

Not that it made watching him go through this any easier. In fact, it was more of a sting, as Caleb would sit by Molly’s cot and stroke his heaving shoulders as he twitched and moaned through more nightmares. That he was having to go through this at the king’s command, after everything he’d done to him. That there was so little Caleb could do. 

That same sense of frustration and helplessness drove him on that night, scouting again. He moved quickly over the short bursts of open ground, keeping low to Frumpkin’s neck and trusting his magic, his horse’s dark coat and his uniform to keep him cloaked in the shadows. When in the smatterings of trees, he walked him slow and steady, knowing the damage a hoof or boot crunching down on a stick at just the wrong angle could do. Moving like that, he very quickly lost sight of the company behind him, lost their slow creeping mass and the lights of the outer torches over a rise in the landscape. 

Before too long, it was him, the wind and what stars could be glimpsed through the clouds. The whole plain seemed to open out, something inside him itching at the thought of the answers that could lie out there beyond the next rise of shadow. All he would need was a glimpse, one raiding party, one enemy torch in the distance, one footprint in the grass to tell him who had passed this way and when. 

Caleb felt a tug in his chest and remembered his promise to Mollymauk. He’d reached the outer limit of what could reasonably be expected of him as a scout, more than halfway through the time his ride was supposed to take. If he went any further, he would be coming back after dawn and it would be impossible to hide the fact that he’d disobeyed. If he really pushed it, he would have to camp out here or risk Frumpkin coming up lame. 

But then he would think of the exhaustion in Mollymauk’s eyes, the way his shoulders slumped when he turned to his armour and faced another day of wearing this personality that didn’t fit him. He would think of his prince, his friend, crying hoarsely into his pillow and not hearing Caleb as he tried to comfort him, sounding for all the world like a lost child unable to understand why his father had left him behind. 

Caleb took a long slow breath of cold night air and pressed his heels into Frumpkin’s side, urging him forward. Just a little further, he would return just shy of dawn. After all, his only promise to Molly, technically, was that his blood wouldn’t be the first spilled. And if his training was worth anything, it wouldn’t be. 

More bursts of frantic speed across the hills bracketed by near silent creeping through copses of trees. Caleb poured all of his energy into his senses, hearing everything from a mouse skittering down by Frumpkin’s hooves to an owl’s call from high above his head, seeing every shift in the texture of the darkness around him, even smelling deeply to try and pick out the sour scent of unwashed solider from the bite of night air. If he was going to disappoint Mollymauk, he would at least be as careful as possible. 

Hours slipped by unnoticed, he lost himself in the glut of information flooding through him and the regular rhythm of his ride. It was tasks like this that brought him the most peace, when he could fully give himself over to his magic, float along through repetition and the hard drag of air in his lungs, when he could feel purposeful while disengaging entirely from the tangled magpie’s nest that was his brain. Times like this, Caleb could remember why he’d always had this ravenous hunger for magic, why he’d loved it so much. 

He remembered why he’d fallen prey to Ikithon so easily. 

But right now, it was his and no one else's. He was pushing forward to save his home, to help his prince. 

The border with the Empire was the clean kind, the neatly cut kind formed by politics rather than geography. With the land changing so little, the only reason Caleb realised how far he’d actually gone was when the sky shifted from black to the hazy grey of dawn. 

Guilt stabbed through him at the sight, the only thing in hours that had jolted him out of his razor sharp focus. He brought Frumpkin to a halt in the middle of a collection of trees that couldn’t even be called a wood, only now realising how his poor horse was breathing hard underneath him. He patted his neck, pulled an apple from one of his many pockets and murmured softly, knowing that Mollymauk and his friends wouldn’t be so easy to forgive him. They must be worried sick about him, he was meant to be back at camp hours ago and it would be half a day yet before they knew he was okay. 

He couldn’t hear the whip crack, not quite, but his scars prickled with a heat the cold morning couldn’t possibly hold and there was a sharp echo reverberating between his ears. 

Cursing himself for a fool, Caleb slid from the saddle, pulling the aches and strains he felt closer rather than pushing them away and knowing he deserved to feel every one. He pulled his water skin out from the saddle bags, letting it trickle out in a steady stream so Frumpkin could drink first, their breaths misting in the clammy dawn. 

“I am a pig headed idiot, Frumpkin,” he sighed, pushing fingers through his horse’s mane, “All this effort and I don’t even have anything to show for it. I was just so certain…”

Just as he was about to rest his forehead against Frumpkin’s nose and let himself have a moment of self pity before getting back into the saddle, he felt something shift on the very edges of his magic. It was like seeing a shadow flicker in the corner of your eye, a second’s movement that threw everything off balance but was so hard to catch. 

But there was very little faster than Caleb. He’d been through Volstruker training twice.

He left Frumpkin to crop at the carpet of leaves underneath them, moving forward on foot. All doubt, all emotion of any kind was locked down tight as he broke through the tree line and slunk forward in the direction of that single vibrating thread. It led him forward, over to the next ridge, though the closer he got the more some instinct pressed him down further into the shadows until he was crawling on his belly to peer into the bowl of the hills. 

And when he saw what was cradled there, hidden down where it would be hidden from any view but the one Caleb now had, made him glad he’d hidden. What he saw was an army. 

Not a raiding party. Not a band of cutthroats sent to harry the border towns. Not a company like theirs. He saw a full, broiling Jagenoth army. He saw racks of arms ready to slice the air in two, along with whatever stood in their way. He saw mercenaries with smiles as dangerous as the swords at their hips. He saw slavers, spearmen, archers, crossbowmen, rank upon rank of soldiers who fought at their masters command. He saw twice, three times, four times their own numbers and, in the middle of all of them, a standard that was rarely seen outside of Shady Creek Run but, when it was, brought blood and terror.

And, out at the edge, where no eyes but his own would see it, he saw a collection of black clad figures sparring against each other with blows that even from here looked brutal, the weapons they trained with had real edges on them. The smell of magic that came off them was thick and smoky like gunpowder, though heavily masked. Masked to everyone but those whose own skin reeked of it. 

They were Volstruker. 

Caleb felt no surprise, he was sunk too deeply into battle mode for that. He simply inhaled slowly and steadily, very deliberately not looking for any familiarity in the way they moved and struck out. Another moment to make sure he’d catalogued absolutely everything that lay before him while feeling absolutely nothing, then he slipped back down the hillside. Back to Frumpkin, kicking himself into the saddle and riding out without another moment’s pause. 

He had to get back to his prince, his friends. He had to tell them their doom lay less than a day’s ride away. 

Mollymauk’s hair ached deep at the roots by the time he heard those hoofbeats, the ones he knew immediately belonged to Caleb. 

He hadn’t allowed the camp to break, insisting they stay exactly where Caleb would know to find them, refusing them even an inch until he was back and safe. Later, he would realise that his fit of pique had earned them all another day to live. 

But not that moment. That moment had been nothing but relief as he’d pushed past Yasha and burst out of the command tent, seeing a lathered, wrung out Frumpkin drawing to a halt right in the centre of camp. An equally exhausted Caleb slid from the saddle, thin shoulders heaving and wiping spit from his cheek. He came down so heavy that Beau had to jump forward and catch him, barely keeping him on his feet. 

Molly couldn’t even muster any anger, it was just joy to have him whole and back in the fold of his protection. He ran up and took him from Beau, gripping his shoulders tight, and grinning like a fool. 

“Thank all the gods, Caleb! You must have ridden halfway across the kingdom, look at you! Come in, we need to get you something warm to eat, I-”

His mildly frantic relief died as soon as he saw Caleb’s eyes. Even as the rest of him was exhausted and ragged, his eyes were alert and hard like chips of ice. 

“Molly,” his voice was low so it wouldn’t carry amongst the tents, to the many eyes that were on them, warily curious as to why the prince’s Volstruker had been gone all night, “We need to talk.”

Once inside the tent, Caleb wouldn’t so much as look at the broth Caduceus was determined he drank, standing stiffly in the centre with his hands wrapped around the bowl. Molly searched him up and down for any signs of injury but the only thing that was troubling him was clearly the weight he carried behind his eyes. 

“Your father will ride out to the north and find nothing. The Jagenoth army is here, every man of them not a day's ride from where we sit. Lorenzo’s standard flew outside of the largest tent, though I didn’t see him personally. Their numbers outstrip ours by far and they are better outfitted, by what I could see in the torchlight. I’d estimate just below ten thousand warriors, a third of them mounted, another third with some kind of long range weapon. And…”

He seemed to steel himself, something like shame creeping into his eyes, “They have Volstruker. Five of them by my count.”

His words drew soft curses, widened eyes, stiffened shoulders as the shock rippled outwards. But Mollymauk turned inside himself and found nothing, only a bleak kind of amusement.  _ It seems your pet monsters have gotten loose, Father. I hope it tastes bitter.  _

Caleb bulled on before any of them could ask him how he was feeling about that, “We have no hope of defeating them in battle and we are too close to skirt them. Our only hope is to turn now and ride hard back to the capital or even try and make it to the King’s army. Even then, we will still be short of numbers and exhausted but it is all we have.” 

“We can’t lead them back to the city,” Caduceus shook his head, usually placid face tight with anxiety, “It is practically undefended and full of innocents.”

“Without that option, we have nowhere to run even if we do manage to get clear,” Yasha’s voice was tense, “And if they catch us in a full retreat…”

“It would be a bloodbath,” Beau finished shortly, her arms folded so tight it was like she was embracing herself and trying to give some comfort. 

“A bloodbath from the rear or a bloodbath from the front,” Fjord snorted, tapping his foot as he always did when he was stressed, “Those are our choices, then?” 

“Is there any way to get a message to the king?” Yasha’s brow furrowed as she thought, unused to being trapped in situations she couldn’t maneuver herself out of either with her mind or her greatsword, “Surely he’ll have noticed by now that he’s riding to meet an enemy that isn’t there?” 

“His Volstruker will have some kind of magical manipulation to bait him on,” Caleb’s voice was still flat, even when he spoke of people who were supposed to be his, “An illusion or a mirage of some sort, torches in the distance, flattened land to suggest they are withdrawing perhaps . And you can be sure any messages we send out will be noticed from this close, as powerful as they are. Even if we could, there would be no time for his forces to reach us.” 

“Then why didn’t they notice you?” Beau countered tightly, “If you got that close? If these are your people, isn’t there some secret way you know that can take them down?”

“I know the same tricks they do,” an edge of emotion entered his words now, a tension that threatened to snap, “I know the same magics. But I am only one against five, weaker than they are into the bargain, less firm in my faith. I am  _ not enough _ .” 

“That’ll do.”

Molly spoke for the first time, voice calm and commanding the way he’d been practising since he was a child. He rose from his camp chair, drawing every eye to him, trying to stand tall enough to shoulder their fears and doubts. 

“I’ve made my decision. We are going to ride out and we are going to meet this army.” 

“My prince, there is no way-” Yasha started to say but Molly shook his head. 

“We’re not going to give battle, not at first. I’m going to do the one damn thing I’ve ever been good at with this job. I’m going to call for parley and I’m going to talk to Lorenzo. Whatever rotten deal my father made that has gotten us into this mess, maybe there’s something I can offer the Jagenoths that will make it right again. Gold or wardship or...or a marriage contract with some Dwendalian countess, I don’t know…”

He daren’t look up at Caleb in the beat of cold, heavy silence that followed those words. 

“But there will be a price and that price may not necessarily be blood.” 

There was a collective intake of breath, whether it was admiration or despair Molly daren’t ask. 

“And...if Lorenzo isn’t the type to be bartered with, your highness?” Yasha asked evenly, letting the ‘ _ which you know he isn’t’  _ go unsaid but lie underneath her words. 

Molly hardened his eyes and gripped the swords at his sides, “Then we take as many as we can down to hell with us. Every Jagenoth that falls will be one less to threaten our city walls. Caleb?”

“Yes?” his friend sounded so much further away than the tent would allow. 

“If it comes to that, your job is to kill Lorenzo. Not to take out the other Volstruker, not to protect me. If we must fight, he does not walk off that battlefield alive, understand?”

He wasn’t used to ordering Caleb around, the words felt sour on his tongue as did the silence that followed. It was only a moment, barely a heartbeat, but from a man that had been trained to obey it was an eternity that very clearly showed his upset. 

But finally, his Volstruker murmured, “I understand, my prince.”

“Thank you,” Molly let his sincere gratitude show in his voice and that crack let the emotion start to bleed in, let his shoulders start to tremble, “All of you...you’re all my dearest friends and you’ve done so much for me. If any of you want to turn back now and leave this company, you go with my blessing. Asking you to die for me...I refuse to do it.” 

Beau was the first to answer, giving a derisive snort and coming up to nudge him sharply with an elbow, “We’re not dying for you, idiot. That murderous asshole is standing in our home thinking we’ll just roll over and give it to him. Seeing the look on his face when Caleb spills his guts?  _ That’s  _ worth dying for.” 

“Well, I wasn’t going to put it quite like that,” Yasha gave Beau a fond roll of her shadow ringed eyes, “But the sentiment is the same. This will be something we finish together.” 

“However it ends,” Fjord nodded firmly, loosening his blade in its scabbard. 

“And you are rather convincing when you want to be, Mollymauk” Caduceus chuckled, “Perhaps it will come to peace after all. Stranger things have happened...like us all standing here facing impossible odds with smiles on our faces.” 

That broke the lingering tension, making them all giggle helplessly like they were children again, facing their first time sneaking out of their bedrooms after dark. Like this was the start of some grand adventure rather than the end of one. Molly felt such a rush of warmth in his chest as he met Caleb through teary eyes and saw him chucking too, for a moment there was nowhere else he’d rather be than in this cold, filthy tent facing death.

“Well then,” he eventually sighed, jaw aching from grinning so hard, “Let’s put this silver tongue of mine to the test.” 

Mollymauk tried so hard not to appear afraid. He really tried. 

For once he was glad of his ridiculous horned helmet and the way it shielded his expression from the soldiers around him. 

The Jagenoth army came into view over a rise in the landscape, a neat, black row of ants in the distance marching towards them in perfect step, banners snapping in the wind and sun catching on the deadly points of their weapons. They came in perfect synchrony, row after row of them, one two, one two, one two, devouring the distance between the two forces. 

And they just kept coming. 

Yasha and Fjord held the enormous black banners high, where they couldn’t possibly be missed, but as those soldiers came on and on and on, as Molly’s tongue dried to a desiccated fruit rind in his mouth, he couldn’t suppress the certainty that this lot of trained killers would just ignore their request and plow right through them, trampling them into the dirt without even a pause. 

But finally, at the last possible moment, the Jagenoths halted. There was a thin strip of land still between them, less than a league separating him and his friends, the soldiers who followed in devotedly, from death. The silence that fell was broken with the snorting of horses and the restless clank of people shifting nervously in suits of armour but it still weighed heavily. 

After a moment, Caleb spoke softly at his side, eyes filmy with magic, “He’s beckoning you.”

Mollymauk didn’t need to ask who he meant. 

“Well then,” his voice cracked on the very first word and he had to hastily clear his throat and start again,  _ come on you fool, you’ve been an actor more than half your life, you won’t flub your lines now,  _ “Well then. Yasha, Caleb, Fjord, with me. Beau and Caduceus, hold the army. If you see anything done that breaches the terms of parley, attack.”

With that, he urged his horse on, never daring to look back and see if his friends would actually follow him. When they did, of course, he’d hate himself for doubting them. 

The fact that only one rider broke from the mass like a droplet of black oil, ploughing forward to meet them, showed exactly what Lorenzo thought of the threat they posed to him. As the formless shape of hulking iron resolved itself into a vaguely humanoid silhouette, Molly took a meagre scrap of comfort from the fact that he was at least in his human form. When he was coming for their blood, he would look much different. 

They stopped their horses a few metres from each other and walked the rest of the way, Molly flanked by his friends, Lorenzo needing nothing but his bristling carapace of sooty metal, swathed in hooks and cruel leather straps, and the glaive stowed at his back. The closer that got, the more Molly realised how his pretty, glistening armour with all its jewels and shine made him look like what a foolish boy would dream a prince wore to battle. He was a tawdry illustration from a fairytale. Lorenzo was an experienced killer. 

“Well, well, well…” Lorenzo spoke first while he was still loping up, hailing them as if they were friends, his voice a low pitched drawl in an approximation of a nobleman’s polite tones that showed how he’d risen from dirt to lead his army on the backs of slaves, “It’s awful decent of you to come offer yourself on a silver platter. Saves us the trouble of carving those pathetic excuses for soldiers I see behind you into meat.” 

Molly swallowed hard and drew himself up, acting as if he hadn’t heard the insults, “Lorenzo. I assume you speak for the Jagenoths?” 

“I’m killing for the Jagenoths, boy,” Lorenzo removed his warhelm so they could see his lazy grin, the anticipation in his eyes, “But aye, I speak with their voice in this matter.”

“Then I offer this to you,” Molly kept his firmly on, “Whatever wrongs my father has done to you, whatever snags there have been in your business dealings, surely all out war is not the best way to seek repayment?” 

“Depends on what you’re repaying,” Lorenzo sneered, “And I bet you don’t know half the mess your daddy’s gotten himself into. Allow me to educate you instead, gold don’t pay some debts, boy. Sometimes blood’s the only way to tip the scales back.”

“Then you and your kingdom are fools,” Molly replied, letting some contempt creep into his voice as the insults rubbed some already frayed nerves raw, “Out there in Shady Creek Run, you have no resources of your own. Your crops file nine harvests out of ten, there's no metals of any use in those mountains of yours, no lumber, no gems. Hence why you trade in flesh, a commodity most kingdoms turn their noses up at. Think of what I’m offering you. Money, trade, the chance to rise as a kingdom by marrying its crown prince to whoever you choose. I’m offering you the chance to actually see your people grow, rather than scraping out a living in the swamp and selling their children to you when they can’t make their rent.”

There was a moment’s pause after he finished before Lorenzo burst out laughing, showing rows of plaque chewed teeth as he guffawed. 

“By all the gods, boy, haven’t they trained you up nice, eh? Got you all dressed up and taught you the right words to say, just like a pretty little parrot. Convinced you that you were a  _ prince.” _

Molly felt Caleb shift beside him, magic crackling in the air. He shot him a desperate glance, pleading with him from behind the metal slits in his helm. They absolutely could not afford to be the ones to break the peace here. 

He swallowed hard and tried to put some more measure in his voice, “Perhaps if you brought my offer to your lords and let them decide whether they would rather see profit or-”

“You don’t understand, do you, boy?” Lorenzo was still chuckling like this was the funniest thing he’d seen all day, “What my good lords of Jagenoth want isn’t profit or trade or to see some pretty tattooed whore of a prince in their daughter’s bed. What they want is to see your father suffer. What they want is your head.” 

That struck Molly somewhere just below his chest, “Mine?” 

“Yes,” Lorenzo nodded idly, eyes creeping up the length of Molly’s body like he was deciding where to make the cut, “Your daddy stiffed them once too many times so they’ve decided his son and heir will be their price. However unimpressive that son may be.” 

Molly hated the fear that chilled his bones at those words, that strangled the words in his throat as he tried to speak. 

“Why’d you think we went to all that trouble to fool your daddy, get him to ride out on a wild goose chase after our shades and set you off on some busywork? It were never him we wanted. We wanted you, just as you are now with a handful of farmhands at your back and a pretty piece of glass for a sword. And didn’t it all work out so nice?”

Molly’s mouth twisted, “I see Ikithon has been giving you more than just Volstruker.” 

Lorenzo spread his mailed hands and gave a wry smile, “You’re the losing side, boy. Got to expect the smarter rats to jump ship.” 

“So…” Molly shook himself, forcing the words up, “If I let you take me, do whatever you want with me, that will be the end of it? My people go free?”

He’d expected the sharp, poorly concealed hisses of rage and dismay from his friends, the hands flying to weapons. He was ready with a raised palm, willing them to hold themselves, praying their loyalty outstripped their love for him. 

“How very noble of you,” Lorenzo cooed in a mocking tone, before his voice turned to iron again, “And maybe that was the plan my lords gave me. But now I’m here...now I see that rabble you call an army...now I have your capital city just a few days ride from here...maybe now I want more? Maybe now I’ve got me a thirst.” 

Molly felt sickness roil in his stomach, “You’d go against direct orders? You’d start a war that would cost you hundreds of soldiers without their permission?”

“Do you think they’ll give a flying fuck about  _ permissions  _ when I hand them the crown of Dosal still red with your family’s blood?”

“Dawn,” Molly croaked, “Give me until then and I’m yours. To kill or to carry back to Shady Creek Run, whatever you wish. On your word that that will be the end of it.” 

Lorenzo smiled, a thick and nasty smile, his hand flexing, arm raising, “Do I look the patient type to you, boy?”

Molly saw how it all would happen. The barest second and that glaithe would be free, the blade would come swinging with it’s sharp whistle, no time to dodge, no time to free his own scimitars, all his hours of training meaning less than nothing as that razor edge bit into his neck and severed his head neat as snipping off a stray thread. 

He saw it all. But it didn’t happen. 

“What in the fuck-” Lorenzo grunted, his arm stilled in the air, muscles tight as iron chord but unable to move. 

Beside Molly, Caleb had his hand out and his eyes were hard, the smell of magic rising off him like steam, “Drop your arm. Turn and walk back to your own. This parley is done, you have your terms.” 

“You godsdamned  _ pup-''  _ Lorenzo spat, eyes full of hatred as they fixed on the source of the magic holding him back. His face reddened and the smell of his own magic began to rise. 

“Lorenzo!” Mollymauk raised his voice, the sickness turning to panic as he realised that the glaive was now fixing to whistle out at Caleb instead of him, that if it did battle would erupt and so many would die, “This is a parely for gods’ sake. We’re under a peace banner. You’ll get to kill me in less than a day, let it be enough.”

“Molly!” Caleb groaned, pained, his magic starting to slip in his distress and letting Lorenzo’s arm move an inch more.

“No,” he snapped, voice firm and tone hard, “Both of you, stand down. Lorenzo, you want it to get back to your lords that you can’t even keep to terms of parley? How long do you think they’ll keep feeding an oathbreaker?”

Lorenzo’s lip curled but at the very last second it became a sneer rather than a roar of rage. He relaxed his muscles and Caleb dropped his spell. 

“I ain’t no oathbreaker, boy, but pay mind to which oaths I made and which I didn’t. Dawn it is then, you come out weaponless and alone before the light touches the base of that hill there. And be warned. You know my trade. You see my ink. You know that I can make you pay hard for every second you’ve made me wait.”

“And that will be the end of this?” Molly pressed, feeling strangely little for someone who had just signed away his life. 

At that Lorenzo only smiled and let his eyes roll over to Caleb, poorly concealed hatred crackling in his gaze. It was clear that this wasn’t a man accustomed to being bested, even in the smallest ways. Caleb had dared to stay his hand and now Molly suspected he’d slipped down one place on the list of people Lorenzo wanted to kill tomorrow. 

“Well we’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?”

At that he turned and strolled lazily back to his horse, never once giving them so much as a glance. 

It was odd, to feel so alone in the midst of other people.To feel like the only person in the world when your friends were at your elbow. 

They’d fallen back a little ways to set up a camp as best they could in the windswept plain. There was a hush about the company now, a dismay like they were all reeling from what just happened. Seeing the hope on Caduceus’ face fade, seeing the bitter anger flare in Beau’s eyes as she realised what had happened, it was all too much. Not waiting for permission, Caleb had rode Frumpkin past them, unable to bear it. 

And now he stood alone at the paddock, running a brush over and over across his horse’s black coat even after it did nothing, just needing to do something. His duty pulled him towards the command tent, towards Mollymauk, but the thought turned his stomach. How was he supposed to watch his prince, his friend, retreat further and further into himself, dull his eyes and shut himself down as he waited for death? How was he supposed to stand by and watch it happen and know he could do nothing at all? 

So instead he hid. He was ashamed at himself for it but at this point it was like pouring a flagon of water into the sea. 

He replayed the parley over in his mind, turning it over to look at it from different angles, even when it’s sharp edges cut into him. He saw everything he could have done differently, all the ways he could have turned the tide. He could have snapped Lorenzo’s arm, found the strength from somewhere. He could have slipped into his mind, changed his words, made him take it back. He could have cut him down where he stood. 

_ And it would change nothing, you fool.  _

Hopelessness crashed over his head like a tide again and it was all Caleb could do to keep his feet under the weight of the myriad ways he’d failed and everything it would cost. 

_ Still wallowing in self pity instead of doing something useful I see.  _

At first Caleb thought it was just his own mind berating him as it often did. But then it sunk it, a moment too late, that the voice was so much clearer and sharper than it usually was. And it wasn’t his own. 

An overpowering sense of revulsion filled him as his mind was invaded, enough that he couldn’t fight back. He’d felt it before but the sensation of someone else seizing control of your brain was so awful, so gut wrenchingly wrong in every way, that having it done brought him to his knees every time. Helpless, alone, no one around to see his distress, all Caleb could do was bend double and retch into the grass while his master slipped into his mind as easily as sliding on a well worn pair of boots. 

_ I would have hoped to find you stronger, Bren. This is the Volstruker’s element and yet you are here whining instead of glorying in it.  _

Caleb could only moan thinly in response, mouth full of bile. His master only used his old name when no one else could hear them, they were supposed to shed them, burn them away, when they joined the order. But each of them knew that the master kept them carefully catalogued, ready to be used to hurt them as effectively as any torture device. 

_ Well, at least you now have a chance to please me and show me you remember who you are...and who your master is.  _

“I don’t...please…” Caleb whispered, tears running from his cheeks to soak into the ground below. 

_ Silence, Bren. Listen. It appears our relationship with Babenon Dosal has reached the end of its life. You are to defect, immediately, and present yourself to Lorenzo of the Jagenoths. He will find a use for even such as you.  _

Caleb’s brain could hardly take in what was being said to him, every inch of him shaking like electric currents were running under his skin, “No...no, the prince is my-”

_ The prince is what I say he is to you. And now he is nothing. I appreciate that you can, at least, summon some loyalty to your former position but I am hereby changing your directive. You serve Lorenzo now. Leave immediately. Do not let me down, Bren. You know the cost.  _

The revulsion fled as quickly as it had come on and Caleb was left to slump on the ground, tremors still running through him, stomach still painfully contracting as his body tried to remember what it was like to master itself. 

It was a long time before he could rise, before there was enough strength in his limbs to hold him. His mind was a flurry of whip cracks, his back burned as if the wounds were minutes old rather than years, his fingers itched to tear his shirt away and find some relief in the night air. 

_ You know the cost.  _

It was only an echo but upon hearing it, Caleb’s jaw clenched. He forced himself to hold still, he dredged up every scrap of training he could remember, filling his nose with the smell of smoke and burned wood to remind himself who he was and what he was. 

Just once, he turned back and looked at the command tent, glowing with warmth at the centre of the camp just a few meters away from where he stood. 

“Molly,” he rasped, voice raw and pained, “I’m so sorry.”

He knew his prince couldn’t hear him and saying it out loud brought him no comfort. 

Caleb left Frumpkin tied where he was. 

It would be easier to approach the Jagenoth camp on foot. 

Molly paid little attention to the hours in between hearing Lorenzo’s last words and ending up back in his command tent, slumped down onto his cot while his friends sat around him, too stunned by dismay and grief to even argue much. All he could think of was that smile Lorenzo had worn as he’d turned away, what the cost of that smile could be. 

_ I’m going to die,  _ he thought vaguely, trying it on for size, trying to get his brain to accept the fact. He found he could muster little in response to it. 

“We cannot let this happen!” Beau raged for the third time in the last half hour. And just like the other times, no one had anything to say to her. 

“It’s our one chance,” Molly found himself saying, hearing the exhaustion in his own voice, “If he can have me, he might leave the rest of you alone. He might leave our people alone.”

“Might,” Yasha repeated, her voice bleak and hard like ice. 

“Yes, might,” Molly sighed, “Might is better than nothing.”

“So you’re just going to give up?” Beau snapped, tight and tense as a drawn bow as she paced back and forth, “You’re just going to walk up to them like a lamb offering itself up to be slaughtered?”

“It’s the only thing I can do,” Molly leaned back against the canvas, eyes closing though all he saw behind them was that smile again and the image of his father’s crown covered in his mother and sister’s blood, “I can’t fight him. I can’t lead you all to some insane one in a million victory. I can’t talk to him. But I can let him have me and then...then maybe…”

He trailed off, shaking his head, unable to muster the energy to even find the words. Beau’s anger ebbed, showing the fear beneath. 

“I’m a terrible prince,” he eventually murmured, eyes opening to not even meet their eyes, voice low and thin as a candle nearly out, “I can’t lead people, I can’t sway people or save them, I can’t ease their hunger or soothe their worries. I thought...I thought maybe I had enough base cunning and enough patter to act like a prince but...that’s all it's ever been. An act. A role I never even wanted. And now...well it’s all caught up with me, hasn’t it? The best hope I have is to die with some dignity and hope it's enough to save all of you.” 

“Molly…” Yasha groaned, her voice a soft, sad whisper but it couldn’t reach him. 

“An hour before dawn, all of you are going to retreat,” he continued, “Before that even, if you can manage it. I’m putting the lives of the company in your hands, save as many as you can.” 

“Molly!” she was exasperated now, her usual calm completely fractured. 

“This isn’t a debate anymore,” he shook his head, making himself stand though it was like moving a puppet with half its strings cut, “Just do as I ask. Let me try and accomplish something good with my death. And...if you ever get the chance, if the gods allow it, drink to my name.”

They had no answer to that. It was something of a relief. 

“I’ll say my farewells in the morning,” he waved them out limply, “Just send in Caleb and…”

Finally, something pierced through the fog. Frowning, he lifted his head. 

“Where is Caleb?”

“After the parley he, uh…” Fjord shrugged helplessly, “He was upset. I think he went to stable Frumpkin, you know how he does.”

“That...that was some time ago,” Caduceus put in slowly, “Hours.”

“I’ll go get him,” Beau shrugged, “Whatever…” She disappeared through the flap, still stomping, shoulders tense and face flushed. Yasha looked after her with soft, sad eyes but didn’t follow, she knew her well enough. 

Molly expected the fog to close up around his head again but it didn’t. Something ran around under his skin, a sensation that something was wrong. Which was laughable, seeing as he was about to be killed as soon as the sun came up and possibly all of his friends alongside him at the whim of a madman. 

Still, it was there and it irritated him just enough to keep him alert and frowning as more time than should have passed by. 

And it was enough that he wasn’t surprised when Beau walked through the tent again, all of her anger replaced by complete and utter shock. 

“A messenger,” she said, voice hoarse like the words surprised her even as they left her lips, “A messenger from the Jagenoths, she had the insignia and everything. She gave me this, said it was for your eyes only and just...left.”

_ This  _ was a piece of paper, folded and sealed with a clumsy black seal like a smear of soot. The design was a crude hook shape. As Molly took it the feeling got worse until it was buzzing like an insect trapped in his skull. It was enough that he hesitated before breaking the seal but their eyes were on him, wary and hesitant and needing to see their prince be brave. 

The writing was done in a hurry, the ink splotchy and smudged. Molly had one of those moments where complete insanity threatened to take the place of dread as he imagined Lorenzo’s huge oni fingers trying and failing to hold a quill but it died quickly. 

When he read the words, there was no more fog and no more distance. Everything was real and close and far too much, pushing the air out of his lungs and constricting his chest until he couldn’t breathe. 

_ Boy, I accept your challenge. Single combat it is, me against the little pup who thought he could snap at me and not pay for it. If I lose, my army turns heel and goes home empty handed. If I win, I kill you and we consider the debt repaid. I was so looking forward to slaughtering every last one of you but your pup made a good point. I get to hold faith with the Jagenoths while my steel gets to see true battle. I’ve never tried a Volstruker before but I’m looking forward to tasting the tears of grief on your face as I push my blade through your heart.  _

_ Lorenzo.  _

“Molly? Molly, what does it say? Hey, it’s okay, just breathe…”

Yasha had taken his arm but Molly barely noticed, he only looked up and found Caleb’s eyes there to accept his own. Of course he’d slipped in while they’d been distracted, of course he chose now to return. At least he had the grace to look ashamed. 

“Caleb...” Molly rasped, tears running down his cheeks and dripping from his jaw to strike the letter, obscuring the words as if that would mean they’d never been. 

The man he loved could only meet his eyes and smile sadly. 

“Oh gods, Caleb, what have you done?”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this chapter contains fight scenes and a violent death at the end, a sex scene with a trans male character at the beginning
> 
> Mollymauk realises he might get the love of his life back and lose him in the same day.

There had never been much of the king in the crown prince. 

The two of them could not have appeared more different, in the obvious places like race and age, personality and attitude, the decisions they made and the way they talked, moved and dressed. And then there were the myriad subtle differences that only someone with a close vantage point would see, the way their minds worked behind their eyes, the things that drove them, what they wanted and what they were willing to do to get it. The two men could not have been more different. 

But right now, facing his anger, Caleb could see Babenon Dosal behind his friend’s red eyes. He saw a king. 

He wasn’t surprised Mollymauk had chosen anger, it was the easier emotion to grapple with after reading the letter and realising what Caleb had done. When he’d commanded their friends to leave, his voice quiet and clipped and full of rage about to slip it’s leash, Caleb had been impassive, accepting, simply giving their dismayed, stunned glances a gentle nod of acknowledgement. He simply folded his hands behind his back and faced the fury of a man who had been brought up being told he was the rightful ruler of everything he could see past the horizon. 

The letter from Lorenzo was crushed in his grip as he growled, “How dare you. How fucking  _ dare  _ you, Caleb. Are you aware of what you’ve just done?”

“Forging the prince’s signature on the letter I wrote to Lorenzo proposing single combat,” Caleb intoned, expressionlessly, listing his crimes like they were a shopping list he was being sent to market with, “Deliberately circumventing the prince’s wishes. Negotiating with a hostile party without the crown’s leave. Risking everything, our land and our people. High treason, all in all. Execution would be the penalty in any court.” 

“And for what?” Molly spat, shaking, his tear streaked cheeks dark purple with anger, “What, Caleb?”

“To keep you safe,” emotion slipped into Caleb’s voice, as much as he tried to keep it at bay, “To save your life.”

He watched Molly choke on that, the letter slipping through his grasp as it slackened. Caleb made a mental note with the part of his brain not consumed by grief to pick it up later. It was all they had of Lorenzo’s oath not to take the city if Caleb should fail. 

“I couldn’t watch you die, Mollymauk,” he continued, swallowing hard, “I couldn’t. It wasn’t fair of you to ask that of me. Go with me or go after me but gods, please don’t make me live in a world that doesn’t have you in it.”

“So now I have to watch you die instead?” his voice broke on that word, as if his throat couldn’t bear to say it and smashed it to splintered pieces. 

“Well,” Caleb gave a bleak, brittle smile, “You won’t be far behind me if I do.” 

“Fuck you,” Molly spat but it was more of a sob now, “Fuck you, Caleb Widogast.”

“He spoke to me,” Caleb sighed, knowing it would be best to get this out of the way too, “He...he entered my mind and spoke to me. Ikithon.” The urge to call him  _ master  _ was easy to shake off when he had his heart aching towards Molly.

“What?” Molly looked up from where he’d gripped his hair in anguish, face slack in horror, “Gods, that's the worst kind of banned magic. He could be executed for using that.”

“I don’t think he plans on being beholden to your father’s judgement for much longer,” Caleb shrugged, “He told me to defect. To betray you and go over to Lorenzo. I don’t know if he actually thought it would work, Lorenzo would have just run me through as soon as he saw me or hanged me for a traitor. Ikithon likely wouldn’t have cared either way.” 

“He…” Molly stared at Caleb, “He gave you a direct order. He broke into your mind and told you to do this thing and you just...didn’t?”

“No. I didn’t. I did the exact opposite actually.” Again, a bleak, crooked smile, he couldn’t help it.

Pride edged into Molly’s expression for a moment before anguish flooded his expression again, “But this is just it, isn’t it? Don’t you see, Caleb, this is why I wanted to do this, this is why I’m so fucking  _ mad  _ at you. That vile creature has already hurt you so much, he’s already tortured you and took everything from you and all because of me! I just wanted one godsdamned time where I could help you instead of cause you more hurt, where I could actually save you like I’ve wanted to since I first met you. But every time, every fucking time, I just make it worse and I cause you more pain. How can I ask you to love me after all of this, after he hurt you for doing exactly that, after he took it away from you.”

“No. He didn’t,” Caleb whispered, “He didn’t take that away from me. I thought he had but...no.”

Molly froze and the whole world seemed to hold its breath, this awful, terrible night finally stopped and allowed them a moment. 

“Caleb…” Molly breathed, his anger gone, his face soft and hopeful and so, so scared. 

“So ask me again,” tears were thick in his throat but he got the words out clear and true, “Please, Mollymauk. Ask me one more time.” 

He didn’t hesitate, “Love me? Love me the way I love you?”

“Yes,” Caleb didn’t lower his voice, he didn’t pull back from it, he didn’t care who heard, “I love you, Mollymauk. Whether we die tomorrow or we live for another hundred years, I will love you for every single second we have.” 

He waited. A heartbeat passed. Two. Three. 

And his mind stayed silent, clear and completely his own. 

They surged together, meeting in the middle, the years and the distance shrinking down to nothing between them as their bodies collided and moulded to each other the way they always had done. Caleb had grown taller, so much so that Molly had to tilt his head up to kiss him, his jaw was rough with stubble that hadn’t been there before, his prince’s hands were rough and calloused when they wound around his shoulders. They were not the teenagers they had been, loving recklessly and wildly, fates throwing them together and saying  _ here, here is the person you were meant for.  _

They were not the same. Now they were older, they’d both suffered and struggled and been broken many times. Instead they were choosing to love each other, in defiance of everything that said they couldn’t, accepting it along with all of its risks and all of the pain it would cause them. 

And it was just as sweet. 

Each man meant to pull away at some point but somehow, they kept finding themselves pulled under, a world where their lips weren’t pressed together just seeming completely unacceptable. And when Caleb’s felt Molly’s split tongue stroke against his own, he shivered and leaned into that as well, pressing on deeper and deeper until they both realised in the same moment that soon, there wouldn’t be any turning back. 

“Do you…” Molly drew back first, panting raggedly and having to make a few attempts at actually speaking, “Do you want to? I mean...I’d be perfectly content with this, this is bliss but…” 

“I want to,” Caleb said firmly, sure of the words as he said them though never doubting that Molly would let him pull back from that ledge if he chose to, “I can’t think of a better way to spend the last night I might have on this plane.” 

“Don’t,” Molly breathed, leaning in until their lips were almost touching again, “None of that. This night is everything. And I’m not letting anyone take it away from us this time.”

Finding that more than agreeable, Caleb sank willingly into kissing Mollymauk, though this time there was more purpose to it, it felt like climbing towards some end, swimming towards some shore. After a while, he felt his dear prince’s hands slip from where they held the back of his head, moving to push Caleb’s heavy black overcoat off his shoulders. In between kisses, he let himself be undressed, the uniform of those people he’d never wanted to be and hadn’t ever been able to truly claim him, pulled away by his lover’s hands until he stood there as nothing but himself. 

When he stood bare before him, every inch of his scarred body open to the cold night and Mollymauk’s gaze, a mean, cold part of Caleb looked for disappointment in his expression. Of course there was none, just the face a man might wear when he saw home at the end of a long, bitter journey. The cruel teeth of the whip, the scars on his arms where the crystals had been embedded, the pale white bands around his arms where manacles had chafed him, Molly saw every inch of it and did not pity him or look away in shame. He understood him. 

Caleb was granted the same privilege to Mollymauk, pulling away his dust stained tunic and leggings, hard worn from the road and so different from what he would choose to wear. What was underneath was less surprising, he’d seen more of Molly’s skin than Molly ever had of his, but knowing it was his to kiss and touch and love made all the difference. He was scarred too, the thin, feathery nicks from his swords and the neat, surgical scars on his chest where his body had been brought in line with his heart. And all of the ink too, in it’s startling colour, the fantastical forests that carpeted one arm, the serpent that wound around the other, the eyes and the glorious peacock that sheltered his heart the way Molly’s own brightness and frippery had kept him safe. 

It was familiar but no less beautiful for that. 

Caleb could have gazed at him until the sun came up, never laid a finger on his skin and been content, but they didn’t have long. 

Molly drew him over to the camp bed he’d been tossing and turning on since they started out, letting Caleb press him back against it with more kisses, ones that spread across his chest and neck and jawline, falling faster and more hurried like rain moving from drizzle to showers. Molly made the sweetest noises, chest rising and falling more rapidly under his lips, prompting him to suck some marks into his soft purple skin. He gave very little thought to his own body, lost on the midst of it all, until Molly’s hand reached down between his legs and brushed his growing erection lightly, making him jump like he’d been given an electric shock. 

“Sorry,” Molly giggled breathlessly, grinning like the man he was rather than the prince he’d been playing, “Um...I want you in me.”

“Yes?” Caleb murmured, coming close again. He crouched over Molly, knees bracketing his hips, hands bracing himself against the edge of the cot, quickly getting drunk on the tousled view it gave him of his lover. 

Mollymauk nodded, hand still down between Caleb’s thighs, stroking lightly, “It’s what I want. Please.”

“I am ever yours to command,” Caleb grinned crookedly, making sure Molly was laughing when he moved to kiss him again and parted his legs with his own. 

Their last time had been fumbling, uncertain, hurried. The two of them had both had a flagon of wine between them and felt invincible, Molly’s birthday party coming to them muffled through the floor beneath them, the strings singing like the desire in their blood. 

It wasn’t too different this time, they were still uncertain and groping at each other, Caleb dropping the vial of oil Molly handed him from his pack, Molly jerking so hard when Caleb thumbed his sweet spot that he accidentally kicked him in the stomach, letting need drive their bodies. It was strange how feeling young and invincible invoked the exact same feelings as knowing you had so little time left. 

Moving into Mollymauk knocked the breath from Caleb, he had to take a moment and rest his forehead on his lover’s and inhale deeply, steadying and centring before he could move on. But Molly’s hands were on his shoulders, his groans and soft cries filled the space between them, his legs locked around his hips as they rocked in time with the creaking of the bed beneath them. All of it was an anchor, a map, showing him where to go, certainty finally when he’d been lost for so long. 

Caleb couldn’t last long, not with ten years of waiting and wanting, he tried to stammer it out to Mollymauk who only reached up and cupped his face with a gentle hand, nodding softly. There wasn’t a wrong way to do this. When he came, it was a white hot flash behind his eyes, every muscle tight and tense and shaking. He heard his name fall from Molly’s lips as he followed close behind, his nails digging into his shoulder. 

Afterwards it was the same delicate, tenuous silence that came after a deep sigh, one that seemed to ring out longer than it should. Neither of them wanted to move away, like the perfect moment of happiness they’d found would tear off into nothing if they looked at it too closely. It was impossible to not think of this point the first time they’d made love, here where everything had fallen apart, when they’d believed in what they felt for each other and had been proven so bitterly wrong. When the door had thrown open and the real world had come pouring in. 

Eventually, it was Caleb who had the bravery to speak first, surprising even himself. 

“I won’t lose, Molly,” he murmured, voice ragged around the edges, “I won’t. Not for you.”

He nodded, tears sparking in the corners of his eyes, “Of course. I know you won’t, Caleb.”

He could see it in his prince’s eyes, he was thinking of the moment when Lorenzo’s arm had slipped that extra inch, the one he hadn’t wanted to allow him. He was thinking of the power that had sizzled off that grey skin, ready to rage up and match his own. But he said nothing and Caleb loved him for that. That and many reasons. 

But that would come in the morning. Here and now, Caleb was happy for the first time in so long and he was going to enjoy every single moment. 

Mollymauk was loath to let Caleb sleep but the reality of what was going to happen in the morning was a bitter taste in his mouth growing by the minute. He couldn’t let him face that battlefield without a wink of sleep, no matter how much Caleb had insisted in the past that Volstruker didn’t need it. 

But his love wasn’t Volstruker any more. And so Molly would let him sleep a few hours, however much it ached. 

He lay there in the quiet, the forest sounds muffled through the canvas of the tent, ignoring the rustling of the leaves and far off calls of the birds so Caleb’s heartbeat under his ear would be the only sound in the world. Strong and sure and constant, like it would go on and on forever. As vital and necessary as the motion of the tides or the thrum of magic through the threads of the universe. 

If he thought of it like that, it was easier to believe that today would not be the last day it beat. 

Mollymauk found the fear for himself evaporated entirely, what burned in the back of his mind and brought tears to his eyes so easily was only the thought of losing Caleb, the minutes and hours he might have to spend on this planet without him. From this side of the glass, he did hate himself a little for putting Caleb in this position, for doing the same to his friends, for being so quick to sacrifice himself, however right it had seemed at the time. 

Pain and fear for your own self was nothing compared to the idea of losing someone you loved. 

And he did love Caleb. And Caleb loved him. They’d said it so many times during the night, like they were trying to make up for a decade of separation, trying to fill the holes left by so many times they’d wanted to say it but couldn’t. And each time, it grew no less sweet to hear those words, to love and be loved by the man he’d wanted his whole life. 

Molly turned and pressed a soft kiss to his lover’s skin, just over his heartbeat, gentle enough that it wouldn’t wake him. All the years he’d feigned confidence, now he actually felt it in all it’s iron hard certainty as he told any gods that might be listening  _ you will not take him from me. Not now.  _

It was rather kingly of him, actually, to think he could command the gods. 

But it gave Molly what he needed to rise from their little bed and face the greying light in the tent, the dawn approaching faster than he wanted it to. He moved around in the milky darkness, fumbling without any servant or attendant to guide him, opening chests and pulling out clothes, rescuing his boots from a far corner of the tent. Molly knew he had to dress while he still had the strength, not knowing what the fear and grief would do moment to moment. 

He chose no chainmail, no padded gambeson. He wouldn’t need to armour himself today and he had no desire to play any role. He would face this day as himself, dressed in simple leggings and a purple surcoat he favoured, rich with embroidery. 

“Would you like me to sneak out now? Or are we going to face the smug grins of our friends?”

Molly jumped just as he was doing the last button, turning and seeing Caleb stretched out contentedly under the thin blanket they’d pulled over themselves when they’d both been too exhausted to continue. He was smiling, resting up on one elbow, looking so wonderfully tousled and ruffled, hair in disarray and mouth shaped bruises blooming on his shoulders, that Molly would have given anything for just another half hour alone with him.

“You’re going nowhere,” he whispered back, closing the distance between them and going to his knees so he could kiss those lips and feel all the nicks and swells in them from everything they’d done together.

“How long do we have?” Caleb eventually murmured, when they paused for air. 

“An hour, I’d say,” Molly sighed and suddenly, saying it out loud and realising what a small amount of time that was, such a cruel and meagre slice to be given, his throat closed up and tears flooded his eyes. 

Caleb groaned softly and kissed his forehead, bringing one hand to stroke back his purple curls and wind through the hairs at the nape of his neck, fixing in them and saying firmly, “It will be alright, Mollymauk. I promise.” 

“That’s not something you can promise,” he gasped, breath coming in a shudder, wanting to be brave for him, wanting to believe for him, but unable. 

“No,” Caleb admitted, his other hand moving to gently wipe away the tears that had spilled down Molly’s cheek, “But I have been trained for this. And for the first time, I actually believe in my own strength.”

“Yes?” Molly whispered, wanting to cling to every scrap of hope, not caring how much it hurt. 

“Yes,” Caleb smiled crookedly and, for as much as he hated the gathering light, Mollymauk was glad he could see it, “Because this time I have something to fight for.”

No one had called for any trumpet blast or signal to raise the camp but he found most of the company were already up and moving, apparently having as much appetite for sleep as Molly had. Fires were going, heating up rations no one felt like eating and the usual coarse conversation of soldiers on campaign, the teasing and calling out to each other across the tents, had found no purchase that morning. Even though they weren’t facing battle today, even with just two lives hanging in the balance, everyone seemed to be grieving already. 

Until Molly and Caleb spilled out of the command tent, hand in hand, an unmistakable rumpled quality to Caleb’s uniform and the obvious bruises from fingers and teeth peering out from under shirt cuffs and collars, blundering right into the circle of their friends around the cookfire. 

There was a moment of silence as four sets of eyes regarded them without much surprise. 

“Well,” Beau shrugged, “Better late that fucking never, I guess.”

And with that the lot of them were laughing helplessly, the wild, reckless laughter of teenagers with a slightly manic edge to it, drawing confused and alarmed eyes from all around the camp. It made little sense but Molly did feel like he could breathe a little easier once it had passed. 

He pressed food on Caleb who tried to refuse it but quickly realised his lover wasn’t going to be put off and gave in. Molly watched him closely, sitting on the ground right beside him and never letting their fingers untangle, but there was no fear or worry in his face. He seemed to be his usual self, almost the Caleb he remembered from his childhood and teenage years, dryly funny and contentedly quiet. 

Mollymauk couldn’t tell if it was just Caleb was that confident or he was enjoying himself while he could. 

The moment couldn’t be put off forever. Again, Molly had to appear strong and sure, for his friends and for his soldiers, swinging up confidently onto his horse to lead them back to yesterday’s clearing as if nothing was wrong. It felt less like lying, as he saw the younger ones in the company visibly relax after he joked with them and chatted amicably with them, making his usual rides up and down the column until they arrived. It felt more like just being a leader. 

Like protecting the people who looked to him for guidance and would call him king. 

It wasn’t a long ride and they heard the commotion before they got there, the sound of raised voices and clamour of the enormous Jagenoth army, already there and raising enough of a racket to make the ground shake under the hooves of Molly’s horse as he rode back to the head of the column, just in time to see them unfurl out over the rise of the hill. Just like yesterday, they boiled down below them like a mass of black insects, the sharp teeth of their weapons edged in fire as the sun broke the horizon just to the side of them and flooded the bowl of the valley with gold. 

The lone figure standing ahead of them, the hulking mass armoured all in black iron but for the horns that thrust up from it’s brow, a glaive taller than Mollymauk plunged into the ground beside him, must have looked up at just the right moment. It raised a fist high as if in salute and, behind it, the soldiers fell silent in a moment and snapped to attention with a reverberating clash of metal. 

Molly’s fingers grew tight around his reins but, beside him, Caleb simply smiled. 

“Real strength doesn’t need to announce itself,” he intoned, clearly quoting something before chucking, “A lot of what they taught me at the academy was bullshit but that certainly rings true at least. He couldn’t look more like he’s trying to compensate for something. Rather funny, actually.”

“If you say so,” Molly muttered, unable to take his eyes from the blade. 

He saw very little to find amusing. 

“Good morning,” Lorenzo hailed them cheerily, his voice deeper and rougher in his true form and through the enormous helm obscuring his face. 

Molly gave him no reply but a cold, hard stare, walking his entire troupe up this time, this would require as many witnesses as possible to ensure Lorenzo kept faith and, more than that, he wanted Caleb to see just how many people were behind him. 

Already a ground had been cleared for combat, ringed in stones by some of the Jagenoths. Clearly wanting to be prepared, a headsman’s block had also been erected on their side of the ground, freshly cut from some felled tree, green wood ready to drink Molly’s life blood in front of his own people. Beau spat on it as they reared up, her eyes glaring acid across the field at Lorenzo. 

“Dressed to die,” Lorenzo said, satisfied, obsidian eyes glinting out at Molly from within his helm, “Mighty considerate of you, boy.”

“I could say the same of you,” Molly answered, dropping any hint of courtly manners, “I can see the joint gaps in that armour from here.” 

“Don’t matter when you’ve got a reach like this,” he snarled, gripping the handle of his enormous blade and yanking it from the earth, leaving a deep gash in the ground, “Shall we begin? It’s a long road back to Shady Creek Run and your pretty head won’t keep forever. Let me put this mouthy little pup down and do what I came here to do.”

Caleb simply nodded, moving his coat to the side to draw his blade. The same nicked, worn blade he’d been fighting with all his life. That, his magic and the poniards in his boots against all of the strength and brutality on display before them. 

Perhaps irritated by Caleb’s refusal to rise to his taunts, Lorenzo continued hollering across the circle, “I was expecting you last night, pup, by what your master told me. I was looking forward to snicking the smile off your face when you slunk up looking for a place in my army. Just that, mind. The rest of you I’d leave to your black booted brothers and sisters.”

Caleb didn’t so much as glance at him, accepting his fingerless leather gloves from Beau and calmly slipping them on as if he had all the time in the world. Molly remembered the day Caleb had finally admitted at fifteen years old that Beau was right and wearing them did make his grip better. He even took the time to clasp his friend’s shoulder and smile reassuringly, then moving to give Fjord the same then Caduceus then Yasha, every one of them embracing him tightly. 

“Clearly you were otherwise occupied!” Lorenzo called, though the anger was bubbling more clearly under his voice now, his composure slipping, “I’d heard you were acting the whore for the boy prince over there. I knew they trained you well at the Soltryce but not in those particular arts. Ever dutiful when commanded, eh?”

Molly was a muscle jump in Caleb’s jaw at that but he smoothed it out within a second. Now they were nose to nose and everything fell away that wasn’t Caleb’s face, his steady hands, his gentle, comforting smile. He had the privilege of tying back his rust red hair in a leather band, making sure every strand was clear of his face. 

Once it was done, Caleb turned and sank down on one knee, holding his blade up. Trapped by convention and appearances, Molly was left to press a kiss to the cold metal rather than his lover’s lips, trying to say everything he felt with his eyes. 

“Please come back to me,” he whispered when their faces were at their closest, “Or wait for me at hell’s gate.”

Caleb smiled up at him, eyes like still pools, “As you command.”

Seeing the two of them at opposite ends of the killing field, it was like a bad joke. Lorenzo, in his full, unrestrained oni form, wrapped in thick iron and the barbed chains of his profession as torturer and slaver, hulking so large the shadow he cast stretched off him like a giant beast, climbing up the hills around them to impossible heights. And Caleb, wearing no armour but the leather bands on his arms, thin sword in his hand, face perfectly still. Half Lorenzo’s height, a quarter of his weight, a bare fraction of his reach, dwarfed by his strength. It was like watching a child face down a dragon in some fairytale.

And Molly had learned long ago that life was no storybook. If it was, Caleb would never have been taken from him, they would have lived happily ever after. And he wouldn’t be about to watch him die. 

It was his task to begin the fight, they were waiting for his command. He swallowed hard and opened his mouth, the urge to desperately beg for Caleb to come back, to stop all of this, to take it all back, was overwhelming but he managed to rasp out the right words instead, the words that would end his lover’s life.

“At arms...and begin.” 

Lorenzo lurched forward with a roar, all the momentum of a charging bull barrelling towards Caleb and hefting the glaive forward. 

And Caleb did not move. 

Everything seemed to slow, seconds dripped by like a dying rainstorm, the scream to  _ move, bloody move  _ caught in Molly’s throat as the blade completed its easy, unstoppable arc through the air…

And whistled through nothing. 

Lorenzo had to stagger to stop himself, overtopping with the speed he’d built up and falling to one knee. Caleb, the real Caleb, not the shadow of himself he’d left standing in his enemy’s path, lanced a quick but deep cut along the back of Lorenzo’s neck, through the joint where his helmet met the shoulder plates. It might have been enough, it should have been enough, but some dark magic reared up from the armour itself, some misshapen haze in the air that lashed out at Caleb and forced him to dance back so it only just caught him lightly across the chest and left a burn mark on the front of his coat. The smell of singed leather and shield spells filled the dawn air. 

“You think you’re the only one with magic, pup?” Lorenzo snarled, furious, “Try this then.”

An ozone smell popped and crackled and where Lorenzo had stood one instant, the next was nothing but thin air. Molly moaned softly in despair as he saw Caleb’s brow crease in a frown. With a flick of his wrist, the blade of the sword he carried alighted with dark flame and he held it out warily, staying on the balls of his feet as he waited for a strike he couldn’t see coming. 

There were a few agonising moments of silence, tension building like a budding blister, until it was finally broken when a guttural laugh echoed out from nowhere and everywhere all at once and some force knocked Caleb backwards, sweeping his feet out from under him. Mercifully he managed to keep hold of his blade and had something to throw up to meet the invisible thing that clashed against his sword. Almost immediately, Caleb was sweating, trembling with the effort of keeping back what could only be the wicked edge of the glaive, now slightly, eerily, visible as fire leapt from the sword to flicker across it. How his thin arms were matching Lorezo’s whole weight, Molly couldn’t say, until he saw the veins on Caleb’s only just visible wrist and neck turning black with magic. 

Volstrucker magic. 

A fresh fear bit into Molly’s already battered chest. How much of his old training could Caleb rely on without slipping back into the darkness that had claimed so much of his mind?

The tension snapped when Caleb’s flame finally edged down the handle of the invisible glaive enough to highlight the shape of the fingers that held it. Even lobstered gauntlets would greedily drink the heat of any fire and after a few seconds of contact, Lorenzo wrenched away with a roar of pain and anger, the invisibility spell flickering out. Caleb didn’t waste a second of his freedom, leaping to his feet and driving a hard flurry of attacks at any fissure in the armour, the ones he’d been carefully mapping out and memorising since he laid eyes on Lorenzo. 

But he could only attack as long as the glaive was down, once it was wrenched back up, it’s reach and thickness covered Lorenzo too well. Then all Caleb could do was put as much distance between him and his opponent as possible, his speed the only weapon he had that could possibly contest Lorenzo’s. He led him in a chase around the ring, dodging his swings and ducking the clumsy grabs he made, clearly hoping to see him tire. 

But Lorenzo only seemed to grow more furious. He lunged with more anger, he pelted Caleb with taunts and curses when he couldn’t reach him with his blade, foam began to build in the slats of his helm. He began using spells, forcing Caleb to counter with magic of his own, summoning beams of light to cut through spheres of darkness that shrouded him, blasting fire from his palms to meet a cone of icy blizzard that lanced at him. 

There was a terrifying moment when the pungent lavender smell of a sleep spell wrapped around Caleb and his eyelids began to droop, costing him the speed he relied on, bringing him to his knees and finally holding him in one place. Lorenzo rushed to press the advantage, swinging his blade with sickening abandon. It was only at the very last moment that Caleb managed to throw off the compulsion, eyes snapping wide and a powerful burst of fire throwing Lorenzo off of him, sending him flying back a good few feet. 

A cheer of relief went up from Molly’s troupe, one he tried to echo but all he could see was the blood washing down Caleb’s arm from his shoulder where the edge of the blade had managed to make a savage cut and leave it hanging limp, the stark blackness of his veins against his chalky skin, the way his chest was heaving and the edges of his hair were smoking softly. 

“His spells,” he moaned faintly, stomach churning, “If he can’t use his arms, he can’t summon his spells.”

Beside him, Yasha put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently. Molly knew it was half to comfort him and half to hold him back. 

Now that both men had drawn blood, the battle turned savage, both actively trying to take the life of the other. Cuts came harder and heavier, the magic burned with a ferocity that scorched the faces of those around the outside. Time seemed to lose all meaning, marked only by the wounds both fighters gained in quicker and quicker succession. Every time Caleb was struck, Molly felt it ache on his own flesh. 

By the time the sun had reached a fair height in the sky, blood was oozing steadily from every gap Lorenzo had in his armour. The vast plates of his chest rose and fell with more force and his rough breathing could be heard echoing inside the helm. He was finally beginning to tire. 

But it came far too late for Caleb. He was wounded in far more places, gashes on his arms, bruises covering his skin from where he’d been thrown or charged, the entire bottom half of his coat burned away in one of his own fire spells, frost burns on one side of his face. And his arm, that very first cut, hanging limp and useless, not enough energy in it to even rise. Even as he stood there, he visibly swayed, his eyes dulled with pain. 

Lorenzo gave a deep, satisfied laugh, “You look ready to end this, my boy. Learned a harsh lesson, eh, about how well a wretch like you can stand against someone like me.”

Caleb growled something indistinct, something that came out as a choking rasp and came up with a spatter of blood from his mouth. He grit his teeth, sword still crackling with fire in his hand and struck out at Lorenzo with what had to be the last of his strength. Without so much as breaking a sweat, the enormous oni reached out and simply caught the wizard’s hand, holding it in a grip like iron and wrenching him up off the ground by it. 

Caleb cried out in pain and Molly screamed but it only made Lorenzo’s grin wider. Moving as easily as if he were swatting a fly, he seized Caleb’s waist in his other gigantic hand and pulled. The snap of Caleb’s arm breaking echoed through the valley. 

Cackling as if it was the funniest thing he’d seen in some time, Lorenzo simply let him drop to the ground, bloodied and beaten and now with two useless arms, one sliced and one broken. He lay limply in the dirt, chest barely moving, blood and tears and soil streaked on his face. 

“A pretty trick, that,” Lorenzo was now admiring the flaming sword with vague amusement, “Might have turned the tide, if you had any clue how to use it.” 

He broke the blade over one ironclad knee with ease, letting the two pieces gutter out before dropping them to the grass beside their equally burned out owner. 

“No!” Molly was still screaming, now he’d started and shattered his composure he couldn’t stop, writhing in Yasha’s grip as he fought to reach Caleb, “No, no, please don’t!”

Lorenzo spared him a smug, satisfied grin, “Oh your turn will come, boy. But don’t think you’ll die easy as your little pup did.”

On the glass by his feet, Caleb struggled to rise. His eyes looked out at Molly through his matted hair, come loose from the tie he’d so carefully and lovingly put there for him. His lips were moving but it was impossible to tell what he was saying. 

“You can have me, you can have anything, just please, please don’t hurt him!” Molly sobbed wildly. 

“Ah now,” Lorenzo tilted his head in mockingly gentle admonishment, “That wasn’t our deal, was it, boy? Old Lorenzo’s good as his words these days. But don’t worry now, I’ll make sure you get a real good view…”

He reached down and plucked Caleb up by the scruff of his coat, dangling him there like a helpless kitten before setting him down on his knees, facing Mollymauk. In the other hand, the glaive swung up to press it’s cruel point to Caleb’s back, ready to be driven forwards, knowing exactly where to place it so when he pushed, it would pierce right through his heart. 

“Oh I’ve been waiting for this,” he crooned, flexing the muscles of his arm ready to put all of his weight behind it. 

“ _ Caleb!”  _ Molly screamed, tears burning his eyes and making the battlefield swim before him. 

“All that training,” Lorenzo laughed, “All that magic and you still couldn’t best me, Volstruker!”

Molly’s eyes burned but he still caught it. The brief movement, the flexing of an arm that was cut, yes, but not as badly as Caleb had pretended. He saw it slip down, turned away from Lorenzo so he would be none the wiser, moving quick and clean with precise motions to take the dagger out of his boot. 

Molly looked into Caleb’s eyes and saw them clear and bright. 

Lorenzo’s surprise was so complete that the glaive’s blade turned easily, Caleb needed only to bat it to the side. With all of the strength left in his body, he sprang and neatly drove the dagger’s point right through the eye slot of the slaver’s helm. Eye, blood and brain parted almost politely for it. 

There was a beat of silence as the Jagenoth’s about to erupt in cheers, as Molly’s forces gripped by horror tried to understand what they’d just seen. As Lorenzo himself stood frozen in shock at his own death until his body’s knees folded in on themselves and he slumped, lifeless, with a rather anticlimactic thud. 

And in the middle of it all, as blood ran down his wrist, Caleb grinned. 

“I am not Volstruker.” 

Everything was swimming and the ground wouldn’t stay still underneath him. Something was roaring around him though perhaps it was the wind.

Every other part of his mind blurred and smudged, Caleb stared at the sky and distractedly calculated how long a person could survive losing blood at the rate it was pulsing out of his shoulder, taking into account the weakness from magical usage, the adrenaline, his height and weight, adding it all up with a blissful kind of detachment and realising the price was growing too high to pay. 

_ I did it,  _ he thought, without really understanding who or what he was talking about,  _ he’s safe.  _

Knowing that, letting go right now wouldn’t be so bad. 

The world suddenly found one direction to go in and it was downwards, his knees buckling and eyes rolling back in his head, darkness swallowing him whole. 

Though Caleb could have sworn, before he ceased to think anything at all, that at the very last moment, someone caught him. 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're both alive and they're both in love but now Molly and Caleb must figure out how to find their place in the world
> 
> \---------
> 
> Thank you all so much for following this fic! I really hope you enjoyed it <3

Consciousness came to Caleb in fits and starts. 

He would wake sparingly, eyes rolling and never quite clear, maybe seeing what was in front of him and maybe seeing something else. Sometimes he would speak in slurred, fragmented words, sometimes all that would come out of his mouth were painful sounding rasps and wheezes, chest heaving under his bandages. Sometimes he would remember and recognise, nodding and shaking his head when asked questions. Sometimes he would talk of people who hadn’t left the castle with them, sometimes he seemed to think Ikithon was speaking to him and all he could do was shake his head and turn away. 

Once or twice he cried for his mother and father. 

Whatever state he was in and for the long, anching stretches of time where he would just sleep, Mollymauk stayed by his side. Either in Caduceus’ tent when he’d finally allow them to make camp for the night or in the rocking, rolling bed of the covered wagon Caleb was laid out in for travel, Molly held his lover’s hand in his own and stroked his hair gently whenever it fell in his face. He would murmur to him gently when he was upset and patiently retell the events of his single combat over and over again, well aware it wouldn’t stick and Caleb would ask again the next time he was conscious. He would sing for him, he would bathe him, he would drip the thin, cloudy broth into his mouth whenever he could be coaxed to eat, just the water and medicine otherwise. His friends would bring him a bowl of whatever simple fare the soldiers were eating, cups of watered wine and fresh changes of clothes whenever they came by to see how Caleb was getting on. They would just smile encouragingly at Molly, touch Caleb’s cheek or shoulder lightly and speak a few words to him so he would know they had been by then leave them alone. No requests for any orders, no reports on their movements or what supplies remained.

They all knew better than to ask anything else of their prince. 

Caduceus did everything he could for him, keeping him stable with field medicine while the miles between them and his proper workshop slowly wore down. He would reassure Molly often, promise that sleep was the best thing for Caleb and that he was doing well. 

Every time, Molly would just give a thin smile and nod. Showing a remarkable amount of patience that none of his friends would ever have believed him capable of, he simply sat and nursed Caleb and waited calmly to be home. 

He seemed almost like a man sitting comfortably in the eye of a storm, taking rest while he could. 

Only one thing ever brought him away from Caleb’s side though Caduceus was the only one who noticed. 

Cad ducked back into the tent before the sun had even broken above the horizon, carrying a basket of fresh picked herbs under his arm, the dew on them not yet dried and filling the small, canvas space with the scent of petrichor. It made a nice change from the smells of blood and opened flesh.

Caleb was exactly as he’d been when Caduceus left in the small hours of the morning, lying stiffly on the camp bed, naked except for some simple trousers torn off at the knee and the many bandages that swathed his forearms, his chest, his shoulder, his legs, all keeping different poultices in place to encourage the flesh to knit back together and not fall into fester and ruin. It was harder going than it should have been, Lorenzo’s blade had either been cursed or coated in some kind of poison to encourage infection. It was resting on a table over in the corner of the tent, Caduceus testing it regularly to see if he could learn something that would counteract whatever was stalling Caleb’s healing. 

Though his hair was freshly washed and his cheeks freshly shaven, his skin clear but for the angry bruises and welts raising in several places, it was only the almost imperceptible rising and falling of Caleb’s chest that kept him from looking like a corpse on a bier. 

Two days, he told himself. Two days until he had all of his ritual casting and all of his carefully prepared medicines at his disposal again and he would have Caleb fixed in no time. 

Not that he knew what would happen after that. There was a quiet fury simmering underneath Mollymauk’s calm of late, a determination cultivating that hadn’t been there before. He hadn’t hid his fear and grief at the fight, he hadn’t thought or cared who had seen him as he’d cradled Caleb’s limp form in the middle of that awful, bloodstained circle of grass and kissed his slack mouth until blood clung to his lips. 

The same blood and tear stains had still been there on Molly’s face as he’d accepted a terse surrender from the next in command of the Jagenoth troops, relieved them of their slave forces which were then promptly freed and watched the now meager enemy leave, keeping the whole company with its swelled ranks very visible on the hilltop until they were out of sight. Only when their creeping black form had disappeared did he flee into the healer’s tent, giving himself over to his anxiety and his need to be close to Caleb. 

It may have felt like a selfishness to Mollymauk but, as far as Caduceus was concerned, when he’d stood on that hilltop in victory and when he sat by Caleb’s sick bed, he’d looked much the same. He’d looked every inch a king. 

It took Caduceus until that moment to realise Molly wasn’t actually in the tent, the uncomfortable chair by the bed was empty, the blanket he’d been wrapped in was draped carelessly over it. For a moment, Caduceus worried but then he remembered and simply turned back to what he had been doing, cutting the wild garlic he’d picked into small pieces ready to be ground into another poultice.

As he’d known he would, Mollymauk returned in time. Neither of them acknowledged his absence, the break in the routine he’d been holding for weeks. Molly simply wiped his mouth off on the back of his hand and sank back down into his chair. He looked frightful, pale and drawn and clearly nauseated but neither of them said anything. 

It was something they would deal with later, Caduceus supposed. 

“I found some wild garlic growing in the woods,” he said instead, putting down the knife and scraping the pieces into his mortar and pestle, then digging through his pack, pulling out other small bottles and tiny boxes, adding pinches of this and that, some to the mortar and some to the teapot he’d hung over the fire kept constantly flickering in the middle of the healer’s tent, “The fresh stuff will be much better for him.” 

“Good. Thank you, Caduceus,” Molly nodded, not looking up but gently moving a lock of hair from Caleb’s forehead, keeping his hand cradled against one cheek. It was hard to say whether Caleb would be aware of it but the gentle contact certainly seemed to help Molly, if nothing else. 

“Some red raspberry leaves too and some mint,” Caduceus hummed, waving them to catch Molly’s eye. 

“How do they help?” Molly asked. He’d taken quite an interest in field medicine of late. 

“Oh, they won’t,” Caduceus shrugged, crushing them in between his hands and letting the pulp fall into the teapot which was starting to whistle. 

Molly’s brow creased a little until Caduceus took the pot off the fire and poured a steady stream of the tea into a battered tin cup. A spoonful of honey went in next, after one for the poultice, before Cad brought the sweetly steaming cup over and pressed it into Molly’s hands. 

“No one should start their day without tea,” Cad hummed, voice placid but he inclined his head in a doctorly fashion, making it clear that draining the cup was not going to be optional. 

Some understanding flickered behind his prince’s eyes and he nodded a little stiffly, blowing on the tea before giving it a sip, one hand still stroking Caleb’s cheek. It was clear which hand he gave his attention to. 

Caduceus nodded. They would deal with it later. 

The rest of the morning went on much like the last few weeks. Caduceus worked on healing Caleb, though his spells came hard so far from the Wildmother’s influence and whatever malicious substance, physical or magical, Lorenzo’s weapon had been coated with continued to burn against it. Caleb would heal, Caduceus had every faith in that, but it was taking longer and costing his friend more pain than he wanted.

To plug the gaps in his magic, he mixed medicines, carefully scraped off and reapplied the thick smelling poultices, wrapped him in wine soaked bandages. Molly was a great help, doing every task that was required of him, no matter how menial or stomach churning, and doing it all with love. 

At some point they had to move into the back of the covered wagon, where their job was made that much more difficult by the constant rolling and the bumps every time a wheel struck a rut in the road. The two of them had developed the balance of circus performers over the last few weeks, just to avoid not being constantly covered in garlic paste, honey, near boiling wine or worse. 

It was a lot of waiting, a lot of quiet moments where there was very little they could do but sit and hope. In these moments, Caduceus was often tempted to coax Molly into talking, asking him about the nightmares he could hear him having whenever he nodded off in the chair by Caleb’s bed or what his plans were for when they were finally home. But it was hard to know whether it would do more harm than good, whether Molly was even thinking beyond the moment they currently occupied, outside of each ragged rise and fall of Caleb’s chest. 

It felt like whenever Caduceus came close to speaking up anyway, Caleb would rouse. Like now, when a slow moment had caught him so tempted to say something he could feel the words crawling on his tongue like beetles, only to hear a sharp intake of breath from Caleb and see his eyelids twitch. 

“Molly?” he groaned, voice thin and reedy through his cracked ribs. 

Molly animated immediately like a puppet having it’s strings yanked, moving faster than he had done all day to sit up and crouch over Caleb, murmuring softly to him, “I’m here...I’m here, Caleb, it’s alright…”

“You...you’re alive,” all the breath seemed to leave Caleb in a relieved rush and he smiled, showing his broken front tooth, “I won?”

Molly smiled too, a sound mostly a laugh and partly a sob escaping his chest. It seemed like today was going to be one of Caleb’s good days. 

“I am. I’m alive thanks to you,” he caught the hand rising weakly from the bed to meet his face and pressed it close, kissing it’s palm and it’s bandage swathed fingers. 

“Still angry with me?” there was even a note of teasing in his voice, something about realising it was done all over again lending him a strength he hadn’t had in days. 

“Yes. And I will be for a good long while, you damned fool,” Molly smiled tearfully, “But you kept your promise. You came back to me.”

Caleb’s bruised and battered face eased into a gentle frown, though he didn’t stop his clumsy attempts to stroke Molly’s hair as if he needed to keep touching him to remember he was really there. 

“What now, my prince?” he rasped. 

Molly bit his lip gently, something he’d always done when he was anxious and hadn’t been able to stop doing even after being sternly reminded how un-princely it was, “Caleb, you’re still healing, we don’t have to consider this right now…”

“I think we do, Mollymauk.”

There was a muffled snort of laughter from Caduceus who, when Molly’s exasperated eyes flickered to him, decided he was very interested in the countryside rolling past outside the wagon’s slit windows. 

He sighed and bent to kiss Caleb’s forehead gently. 

“I can’t make any promises about what’s going to happen when we get home. I mean, gods, Ikithon’s been there this entire time with only Jester in charge, who knows if our warnings got there before the other Volstruker could act, if he’s tried to act on this coup against my father or if he was waiting until my head was off my shoulders or…”

Caleb said nothing but the hand that was held in Molly’s, the one not cradling his cheek, gently squeezed, bringing his prince’s increasingly despairing rambling to an end. 

Molly took a deep, shaky breath, following his lover’s unspoken advice. When he spoke again, his voice was steadier. 

“I trust Jester. I do. I know she’ll have done the right thing and if the bastard’s done anything I’ll tear him apart twice as opposed to just the once. But then…even then, if everything’s okay, I don’t know what’s going to happen when Father comes home.”

Caleb nodded, eyes unusually sharp and aware. He hadn’t had this much control since his fight, for all the pain behind his even gaze and knowing how hard he was fighting just to have some time where they could speak, it gave Molly strength. 

“But I know what I want,” he murmured, managing a smile for his love, “I’m not going to be parted from you again, Caleb, I refuse. The whole castle, the whole kingdom, the whole damn world can know I love you and they can bloody well learn to live with it. I almost lost you twice and it’s nearly killed us both times. I won’t take a third.” 

Caleb’s expression softened and he nodded, smile turny wry, “As you command, my prince.”

“Oh fuck off,” Molly laughed, dissolving into giggles and kisses, both of them buoyed to the point of hysteria by finally being able to say it out loud. 

“Think about it. If Ikithon is gone, if you don’t have to be Volstruker any more, we could...I could…” Molly breathed, unable to even say it for fear of realising how thin and fragile his hopes were. 

“Liebling, without the Volstruker, I’m less than nothing,” Caleb sighed, wincing as he eased back against the pillow, “I could maybe keep my position as your guard but I’m barely fit for that, let alone a consort. I want to, of course I want to but...I just don’t want you to hope and be hurt.”

“Who decides a prince’s consort, my love?” Molly asked levelly. 

Caleb frowned, “The king. But your father…”

“And what if my father wasn’t king any more? Who would be king then? Who would decide who I could and couldn’t marry?”

The temperature seemed to drop a few degrees, in spite of the sun that filtered in through the canvas, stronger and stronger as they got closer to home. Across the small space, Mollymauk saw Caduceus’ tail twitch but his expression didn’t change. 

“Molly...you never wanted this,” Caleb groaned, voice barely a whisper, “Please, don’t do this just for me…”

“I’m not, not entirely anyway,” Molly admitted, stroking Caleb’s rusty locks gently, “And it may not come down to what I want to do anymore.” 

“No?” Caleb looked up at him, worried, of course, but also willing to follow him to the ends of the earth. 

“No,” Molly sighed, feeling his mind pulled in several different directions, several different reasons, all ones he didn’t particularly want, “I think this is something I have to do.” 

Asarius seemed quite unchanged from the outside.

Molly didn’t quite know what he’d expected, Jagenoth banners fluttering from the ramparts perhaps, but as the sun fell across the black stone of the walls and the spires of the taller buildings just behind it, it truly did seem like a city at peace. Perhaps the war really had stayed with them. 

Fjord blew their horn outside the gates, two long, loud, triumphant blasts to tell the city it’s prince had returned in victory. Once the enormous wooden gates swung open they rode through, past the more ramshackle tenements that relied on the wall to stay standing and their bleary eyed residents, peering out of doorways and windows to blink at the commotion riding past. When they realised who it was riding at the head of the column, they called out, hailing their prince and welcoming him home. 

Molly had known people would need to see him and prised himself away from Caleb’s side to ride up front, taking heart from the fact that he was growing stronger by the day after their talk and the promises they’d made to each other. Caduceus had shook his head in bemused relief at his sudden turn towards recovery, all of them holding but not sharing the same conclusion. Caleb had forced himself well again so he could be by Molly’s side for whatever came next. 

The cries and cheers built slowly as they followed the main road deeper into the city, as people realised what their return must mean. Either the end of the war or at least a successful battle, a pronouncement would need to be made later, but either way seeing them home and whole was a cause for celebration to a people who’d had precious little of that. It wasn’t exactly the extravagant parade that had seen them out of the gates months ago now but there were the same delighted faces, the shouts of excitement, the cries of relief as people saw their family members in the company, alive and well. There were some flowers thrown in their path, whatever the good people had to hand, and Molly got to exchange some kind words, touch a few outstretched hands and offer comfort as they passed. 

He held on to every face, every touch, every moment of their joy. He would need it. He would need to remember what he represented to his people. 

The gates to the palace were already open to them, clearly word had travelled fast. The first to pass under the portcullis and those thick black walls, a sudden fear gripped Mollymauk by the throat, all the anxiety he'd deliberately been putting aside seeing a chink in his armour and rushing in all at once until he could hardly breathe. 

What if Jester wasn’t there to meet them? What if it was all a trap, what if Ikithon and the Volstruker were about to descend on them, close the gates and cut them off and seize them? What if he’d taken her prisoner, what if he’d hurt her, what if he’d killed her…

But then there she was, bursting out into the yard from one of the watchtowers, breaking Molly’s face into a grin of such relief as he staggered off his horse to meet her. 

“I saw you!” she cried, flying into his arms and holding him tight, “I saw you coming, every morning I watched for you and today you were there!”

Molly could only laugh helplessly, not caring at the ache in his ribs as she squeezed the life nearly out of him, “Gods, Jessie, I missed you…”

“I missed you too,” she sighed, “Oh! I got your message by the way.”

Molly froze, all the mirth whistled out of him, “You did? What happened? Jess, where is he?”

His sister pulled back, her grin still beaming as bright as the sun, “I mean, you were kinda late, Molly. By the time it got here, he’d been in the dungeon for, like, three days.”

Molly’s jaw dropped. He didn’t care how ridiculous he must have looked. 

Jester cackled, “I think he thought I’d be sleeping or something. Came in all creepy like and talked about how  _ my services were no longer required and I’d surrender if I knew what was good for me _ .” Her impression of Ikithon’s slimy tones was eerily spot on. 

“Fucker,” Molly spat at the thought of that monster standing in his sister’s room, thinking he could threaten her, “What did you do?”

Jester tilted her head and smiled prettily, “I brained him with a psychic lollipop!”

After that, it was a long time before Mollymauk could bring himself to let her go. In fact, it was only when Beau pulled him off so she and Yasha could hug her instead that he allowed it. 

“Caleb. You don’t have to do this.”

Molly’s voice was soft but it echoed through the dank hallways of the dungeons all the same, telling him over and over that he didn’t owe Ikithon any more of his time, any more of his words, any other chance to hurt him. 

Caleb sighed, shifting as he leaned against his prince, grudgingly letting him take most of his admittedly insubstantial weight. He could walk without support, just not for very long and the tightly winding stairs down to the dungeons had nearly undone him.

“I don’t for him,” he admitted, voice still coming a little rough, his ribs were taking the longest to heal, fractured and nearly splintered when Lorenzo had thrown him to the ground over and over, “But I think I need to for myself. Just so I don’t have to carry him any further. So I know it’s done.”

Molly nodded, admiration in his eyes behind the more obvious concern, “I’ll come in with you if you like?”

Caleb gave his arm a grateful squeeze but shook his head, “No. He’ll just use you to try and aggravate me or he’ll goad you into doing something you’ll regret.”

“Will I, though?” Molly arched a doubtful eyebrow at him. 

“Yes,” Caleb chuckled, not caring how it made his chest ache, “You would, when you thought back on it. We’ve agreed, he’s the empire’s problem now and with the evidence we’re sending, with the kind of magic he’s been doing, believe me. He will get the punishment he deserves.”

“Fine...but we could extradite him  _ and  _ I could punch him in the face. What’s wrong with both?”

Caleb leaned close and, after checking the goalers had stayed behind the door to the dungeons as instructed, kissed Molly’s cheek, “I’m not going to let you sully your fists on him, Liebling. He’s not worth it.”

Molly softened considerably at the kiss and sighed, “As you will. But if he tries anything or comes within an inch of you, I’m taking his head.”

“Well,” Caleb smirked, “You could take it off what was left of him, I suppose.” 

This time, the pride in Molly’s eyes outshone his worry and he let Caleb steady himself and step out of his support, limping steadily to the heavy iron door in front of them. He spoke the right word and curled his hand into the right arrangement, hearing the heavy metallic clicks and thumps of the locks unravelling at his command. 

A thin stream of cold, rank air and a wall of darkness greeted him as he stepped through, waving the door shut behind him. He lit a small flame at his fingertips, throwing the cramped cell into shadowy, restless relief, the moulding straw scattered on the floor, the pile of ragged cloth against the back, the grim pail in the corner, the oppressive walls of deliberately rough textured stone so no comfort could be found within them. 

“It was always fire with you, wasn’t it, Bren?”

Caleb did not start at the thin voice. The pile of rags shifted and he looked down at the indistinct form of moulding cloth, skeletal limbs and briefly glimpsed flashes of pale, sallow skin that used to be the man he’d called master. 

“A simple light spell would have done for any wizard but no. No, for you it always had to be flames.”

“It was the first spell I learned, as you well know,” Caleb answered, voice level, “And you will call me Caleb.” 

“Will I?” there was a rasping, hacking sound that might have been a cough and might have been a laugh, “Strange...to keep the name I gave you…”

“Bren is dead,” Caleb shrugged, “You killed him and you burned away every trace of him. Caleb is what I have left and I will make it work.”

“And it does seem to be working out well for you. Look at you, out of your blacks and confidently wielding power I gave you as if you have a right to it, threatening the man who made you everything you are.”

“You made me a slave,” Caleb shook his head, “You made me a weapon. I wasn’t human until the day you sent me here, I wasn’t living.” 

“And now you are, is that it? You’re going to earn some kind of fairytale happily ever after and live the rest of your days as a happy man,” the voice clawed back some of it’s old maliciousness, a tattered vestige of it’s old power. Ikithon shifted and a yellow eye flashed out at Caleb, full of barely restrained hate, “Are you truly such a fool as all that,  _ Caleb _ ?”

“It is not foolish to hope. Whatever you tried to make me believe.”

It was definitely a laugh this time, a harsh and cruel laugh that echoed in the small, damp cell, “What, you think King Babenon is going to come home full of thanks for what you did? You think he’s going to trust you after what I did? He beheaded Sorah, you know, when he got the message that I had turned on him. She’d served him loyally for decades, she refused my order to defect too, and he still executed her without a second thought. And you still believe he will come back, give you some kind of reward, trust you and give you his son’s  _ hand?  _ Oh, Caleb, didn’t you learn anything from the first time?”

Caleb fought against the twitching in his jaw and brought his hands into tight fists. For years Sorah had been his jailer, her hard eyes watching his every movement, ready to report to Ikithon if he’d stepped even slightly out of line but still, his heart clenched at the news of this connection they’d shared, this refusal to let go of the monarchs they’d devoted their lives to. 

“I do not know what will happen when the king returns. But it sounds like you should be very grateful that you will be long gone when he does.” 

“Ah yes,” Ikithon’s voice deadened, “Glad to see my life’s work burned around me. Glad to see those talentless dogs who took my title get to take my life too. My thanks, Caleb Widogast, for your mercy.”

“It is more than you deserve,” Caleb met his eyes unflinchingly. 

“But you are still deluded, you know, for all your newfound confidence and certainty. I did not choose you at random, Caleb, I chose none of my Volstruker on a whim. I saw the darkness in you, I saw the lust for power, I saw the ambition that lived in you even as a child. It was that which I drew on for all the years you were with me, faithful to me. And it will still be there, even after I am dead and gone.”

The fire at Caleb’s fingertips flickered and writhed, either to gutter or roar, it was hard to say. He kept his face impassive and his fist clenched tight. 

“So if you think you are going to walk off into the sunset, hand in hand with your prince and live happily ever after, Caleb, then you truly are a godsdamned fool. Remember that when Babenon takes your prince away from you for the second time and sends you to the headsman’s block for that stain on your soul I saw all those years ago.”

Caleb took a long, slow breath, in and out, feeling the deep ache in his ribs and the black in his veins pressing against the insides of his wrists. 

And he opened his eyes and smiled placidly down at Ikithon. 

“If you think I’m ever going to believe a word you say ever again, then you are the fool, Trent. I’ve gotten what I need from you. Goodbye.”

Caleb snapped his fingers and the flame went out, leaving his old master trembling in the darkness as he stepped out of the cell, locked it up tight and saw his love waiting for him in the brightness. 

And for the first time, Caleb’s soul felt light and his past was silent. 

Three days. That was all the time they were given, to rest and let go and live without worry. 

But it was a very good few days. 

Molly would have gladly never left his bed, not while Caleb was free to share it with him, but he made himself get up and call council meetings, to hear how the war had affected his people and to fix things where he could. He took reports from the captains of his guard, from the seneschal, from stewards, he spoke with them openly and asked what more could be done. He made himself look over the ledgers with Jester, letting her explain the rows upon rows of numbers to him until everything clicked into place. He held court and listened to anyone who came to speak, giving justice and reassuring where he was able, promising to do better where he couldn’t. He made sure he was visible, he made sure he was working. 

The looks of concern and dismay from the council members and courtiers who hadn’t followed his father into war were constant, like this was all some strange game Molly was playing and the punchline would pop out soon. Molly didn’t especially care what they thought or how long they stared, how often their eyes slid to his father’s empty throne, as long as they did as he asked. 

And slowly, strangely, Mollymauk found he rather liked being a leader. Not that he ever felt he knew what he was doing, he realised that wasn’t exactly what being a prince was about. It was about listening, it was about untangling knots, it was about giving people a voice and receiving their trust and their knowledge in return. Or, if it hadn’t been about that before, it was now. 

And Molly was actually quite good at it. 

There was also the added bonus of coming back to his chambers every evening and finding Caleb already under the sheets, nose in some book he’d borrowed from the library that day, whichever one had most taken his fancy in the hours he’d spent there. Together, Caduceus and Molly had found a compromise, he would take some sick leave from his position as Molly’s guard as long as he could spend the days in one of the comfy leather chairs nestled amongst endless stacks of books and scrolls. He’d taken to it all surprisingly well. 

But when Molly returned, his attention would belong solely to his prince, the two of them happy to forgo sleep despite their injuries and their exhaustion, finding the time they had together just too precious to waste. They would have sex, of course, but a lot of the hours ended up being filled by just lying nose to nose, cuddled close in the warmth of the bed and talking. Talking freely, without having to worry who might overhear, talking of anything and everything they chose, often ending up laughing in the dark like the teenagers they’d once been or weeping softly in each other’s arms. Each other’s face would be the last thing they saw before sleep took them and the first thing to greet them when they woke again. And it was simply bliss. 

Until the morning a loud, long trumpet call woke them. 

Molly’s eyes snapped open to see Caleb’s face already alight and aware, his mouth pulled into a grim, determined frown. 

Both of them knew exactly what it meant. 

“Are you ready?” Caleb asked softly. 

“No,” Molly admitted, grimacing, “I feel like I’m going to be sick.”

Caleb’s hand moved up from Molly’s hip to touch his face, “I’m with you. We’re all with you. You’re not going into this alone.”

“I know,” Molly mamanged a shaky smile, “I love you. No matter what happens or what he says or how this goes, that won’t change.”

“I love you too,” Caleb leaned in to kiss him but Molly froze in his hands.

“No, I am still going to be sick. Sorry. Can you let go?”

Before he could blink, Molly was up and running. Caleb tried to follow, but found the door to the adjoining washroom closed against him with a resounding thud, not quite enough to mask the retching coming from behind it. 

He thought about knocking or going in anyway but told himself to give Mollymauk some space. When he’d faced down Ikithon, the man had already been broken, beaten, the battle had already been won. Today, Molly would need to face his father at full power, defensive, angry, looking for blood and blame. Bitterness old and new would need to rise to the surface and it was impossible to say what would win out, it was little wonder he was nervous to the point of sickness. 

And this time Caleb couldn’t fight for him. He could only stand beside his prince and hope it would be enough. 

By the time Mollymauk emerged, pale like lavender withering on the stalk and shaking slightly, Caleb was dressed. Not in black, never that again, but in soft wools and dark brown leathers, a new sword at his hip and the new coat Molly had made for him to replace the one his fight with Lorenzo had burned. And a dagger in his boot, though it would be best to keep that concealed. 

“Gods, if I do that in front of my father, this won’t go well,” Molly groaned, swigging straight from the ewer of water. 

Caleb wanted nothing more than to tell Molly he didn’t have to do this, they could tumble back into bed and keep living the charmed life the last three days had given them. But he wouldn’t lie to his prince, not now. 

“I’ll send down to Caduceus for something to settle your nerves,” he offered instead, helping Molly to dress when his shaking fingers proved unable to manage his buttons. 

“Raspberry leaf and mint tea,” Molly nodded, “That works.”

Caleb frowned a little but he let it go, they had more important things to look to. 

For his battle, he’d needed leather armour, bracers, swords, symbols drawn onto his skin with ink. For Mollymauk’s, he needed velvets and jewels, he needed the slim gold circlet that sat in his purple curls like a comet against a dusky sky. Obviously, Caleb wasn’t the best versed in how to dress a prince, he’d become much more adept at undressing them lately. Jester or Veth would have been better but already they would be playing their own parts in this alongside the others, rousing the castle, waylaying Babenon with pomp and ceremony, buying the two of them as much time as they could.

They had all put their trust in Mollymauk and it was down to him to win them a future they wanted to stick around for. He needed to repay them with change. 

Before too long, his lover stood before him in the morning sun, glittering like something forged and wrought, something from the stars or the centre of the planet. He looked like something unreal but Caleb knew better. Something he’d learned was whatever Molly wore, whatever act he was putting on, whatever other people thought of him, underneath would always be his love. The tiefling who’d saved him and made him realise he deserved love in return and deserved to be happy. Even when Molly lost sight of himself in it all, there would always be that person who was kind and free and wanted good for others. 

And it would be enough. It had to be enough. 

“Come on, my prince,” Caleb smiled softly, taking the hand that Molly stretched out towards him, “Let’s go make the world take notice of us.”

It did hurt that Caleb couldn’t just fight this for Molly. But as his love smiled at him and nodded, it felt good to be doing this together. 

There was much that could be said for Babenon Dosal. For one, his composure was impeccable. 

When he walked into the council chamber, only to have the heavy doors close behind him and cut him off from any of the assorted generals and captains and lords he’d walked in with, when he realised he was completely alone save for his son who was sitting in the high throne at the head of the table exclusively reserved for the king, he didn’t flinch. He barely even looked surprised. 

“It’s good to see you home safe and well, father,” Molly’s put all of the confidence and gravitas he could muster into his voice, the irony not lost on him that he was imitating the mannerisms of the man who stood before him, “I know you’ve had a long and rather fruitless campaign and I would love to let you retire to your chambers and rest but we need to talk.”

The king laughed, a mirthless, hollow sound, “Talk about what exactly, how you’re in league with that Empire snake Ikithon? I see that Volstruker pet of yours lurking in the shadows back there, Mollymauk, so do not try and deny it. I warn you, if I find that you have willingly sided with them in a poor effort to take our kingdom I will show you as little mercy as I show them.”

Behind him, Molly heard Caleb shift from where he lent against the far wall and step up until he was level will Molly. Just because he was no longer in Volstruker blacks didn’t mean he was any less deadly or would be any less willing to accept slights against his love. 

“So I will give you this last chance, son,” he spat, “Hand  _ him _ over for execution immediately and get out of that chair or face the consequences.”

Molly sighed tiredly though the threat against Caleb made his fingers flex for the hilt of his sword, “Father, will you cut the bluster for just five minutes and allow me to explain? Caleb is no threat to you and you will cause him no further harm than you already have.” 

“Your blood will not save you, boy, I swear it, they die just the same as ordinary men-”

“ _ Father,”  _ Molly’s voice snapped hard, finally bringing some kind of clarity to the king’s eyes, even if it was closely followed by a look of horror and contempt, “Ikithon is now three days closer to the Empire, in chains and going to face his people’s own justice as he deserves. And before you accuse me any further, before you  _ dare  _ make another threat against Caleb, remember exactly who it was who let the snake into our palace in the first place and fed him all these years!”

He watched his father’s lip curl across the distance that separated them, never flinching or breaking eye contact even when he knew he would have not a few weeks ago. 

“Then...if not the treacherous wizard, son, what exactly has given you the very,  _ very  _ ill thought out idea to sit in my chair?”

Molly inhaled softly. He’d hoped, he’d prayed, for days now that when he needed the words they would come strong and sure and not stick in his throat. He hoped they would feel right and honest and certain on his lips. And mercifully, the silver tongue that had served him so well for years did not let him down.

“Your reign is over, father. I’ve learned things about you in the past month that, honestly, I’m ashamed I didn’t see until now and they make you entirely unfit to go on as our king. I’m done willfully ignoring the harm you’re doing to our people...and to our family. I can’t promise I can fix everything but I’m damn well going to try. For the love I have for you and my mother, I won’t disgrace you publicly, you can choose whatever reason you’d like me to give for your abdication. But we’re changing things around here, father, and we’re starting now.”

Again, the icy, unflappable composure. He didn’t pause or even look dismayed, he simply threw back his head and laughed. Long and hard until the sound bounced off the walls. 

“Oh but this is entertaining. One campaign, one victory in a fight where you didn’t even lift those pretty swords of yours and you think you can call yourself king? I have to admire your ambition, son, I do but the game is over now. Your father is home now and you can slink back to your rightful place. Quickly now, before I really lose my temper with you.”

Molly felt the ghost of a slap against his cheek. He knew what it was like when his father lost his temper and he feared it still, he couldn’t lie about that. But now he had something stronger than his fear. 

“Perhaps I should have led with this,” he sighed, “But I spoke with Lorenzo, I heard his reasons why the Jagenoths had sent him to war. It was a blood debt they were paying, his exact words were that you’d  _ stiffed them too many times  _ and that my death was the only thing that would level the score. Hence the trickery which, you have to admit, we fell into nicely.”

His father’s mouth twitched but a flicker of dismay touched his eyes. Something in Molly stirred, maybe his father really would have suffered to see him killed. He hadn’t been certain. 

“And it got me thinking. There’s really only one kind of trade that goes on in Shady Creek Run and that’s slavery. Which, if it was known that you were not only smuggling but dealing in flesh with the worst, most brutal slavers in the country, would look very bad for you. It is explicitly banned in Xhorhas after all. I wonder what the Bright Queen herself would say?”

Now there was the emotion, cracking through. The king may have a composure of iron but the prince knew all the brittle points. 

Anger soaked into his eyes and his voice as he snarled, “You have no proof. Who in their right minds would take your word for it?”

Molly smiled, though there was no satisfaction in it, “I do, actually. A bad idea to let my sister poke around in the castle ledgers, not that I believe you ever expected her to take her role so seriously. But she did. And she found the missing money, the letters from people who didn’t exist, the trading companies that have long been suspected as the Jagenoth’s fronts for their dealings in kingdoms where they’re not welcome, Ikithon’s signatures alongside your own on every document...well, there we found our proof. It broke her heart to realise what you’d done. She’d always believed the best of you.”

The king lurched forward, slamming his hands down on the council table and for the first time Mollymauk felt like he was in real danger as he realised just how much fury he was holding back. Caleb drew his sword with a sharp rasp but he put a trembling hand out to stop him. 

“You...you have no idea,” the king spat, face pulled back in an almost animalistic expression of fury, “You know nothing of what this role takes. How you bleed, how you suffer and sacrifice. You have never had to give anything of yourself, Mollymauk, and yet you sit there and judge me for the things I’ve had to do to keep us in power? You know  _ nothing.” _

Molly swallowed hard and shook his head, “That was true once, father, but not anymore. You say I know nothing of being king. But it seems I know more than you. I know it is about protecting our people, loving them and listening to them and making their lives better. And yes, maybe I am not cut out to do that yet but I will be. Because I’m going to try and I do know that it’s all I can do.”

He rose from the throne but he no longer needed it, he had the fire in his eyes and his voice as he closed the gap between himself and the king, “You asked me who would believe my word against yours. I’ll tell you who, the people who I fed when you were content to let them starve. The people of this city who know me in a way they never knew you, who love me when they fear you because I have worked to earn that love. I have been there, amongst them, I have listened and shown them I am willing to learn and grow to be a ruler they can be proud of. Oh, the councillors and generals and lords, they would gladly turn a blind eye to what you’ve done to keep their positions but ask yourself, father, against every last one of the people I have worked to know and earn my place as their king...what will it really matter?”

Mollymauk couldn’t remember how it had happened but now he was the one towering over the king. Close enough that he saw the shift in his eyes that told him he had won. 

He was relieved. But he would be lying if he said it didn’t hurt. 

“There is one thing I still don’t know,” Molly dropped his voice, letting the deep sadness show in his voice, “One thing I don’t understand.”

Babenon managed to meet his son’s eyes, looking only shell shocked. 

“When I was a child and you told me how you adopted me, how you chose me out of the goodness of your heart...I felt special. I felt like I was worth something. Like I mattered, even though I’d come from nothing. I loved you so much, father…” his voice broke but he managed to keep going, “So I want to know what happened to that. I want to know what happened to the man who saw a poor, lonely kid with no family and decided to make him his prince, who married a courtesan because he loved her and made her a queen. I want to know what happened to the king I looked up to, who I dreamed of being like one day. I want to know what happened to my father.”

Babenon opened his mouth and closed it again, shaking his head sadly, “I...I wish I knew, Molly. I really do.”

“Father, this is for the best, believe me. Go find the man you were again, go back to Zadash. Hells, go to Nicodranas, go to mother, try and remember whatever it was you two had.”

Babenon shook his head, old pain in his eyes to match the new but Molly had come too far not to hope there was a future for the tired, broken man who stood in front of him.

“You talked of the day I adopted you,” his father spoke softly, in a voice Molly had forgotten he had, “I knew there was something in you as soon as I saw you. And...and I always hoped you’d grow to be a better person than I ever could be. It seems I got my wish, for as much as everything else went wrong.”

Molly nodded, chest aching, “I will try, father. Please know I am not doing this selfishly, I’m doing this for our country, for my friends, for Mother and Jester...and for my family.”

Babenon’s eyes moved from Molly to Caleb, standing a respectful distance behind him and giving his prince a slight frown. Something like understanding flickered across his face. 

“I wouldn’t blame you for not believing me when I say this,” Babenon said softly, “But as someone who fell in love with someone they shouldn’t and still had it be one of the better things that happened to them… I am glad you have him.” 

“As am I,” Molly nodded, folding his arms and clearing his throat, “Well...I’ll let you go to your chambers. Under guard of course but I’m sure you understand why. I expect you to announce your abdication by the morning and decide what you want to do. There may be a place for you here again far in the future, I can’t say for certain, but for now...I thank you for everything you’ve done for me. And I hope you find a way back to being my father and being a good man.”

Babenon nodded slowly, reaching up and removing the crown from his head. It was old gold, heavy and unadorned, the metal speaking for itself and it made a solid noise as it was set on the council table. 

“Best of luck, Mollymauk,” he said, seeming much smaller without it on his head. Molly realised for the first time that he was the taller of the two of them. 

Babenon Dosal at least got to leave the room of his own accord, his head held high. 

Once they were alone, Molly gave a shaky sigh, the adrenaline washing over him all at once. Caleb moved immediately to wrap his arms around him, letting him slump under the weight of it all, keeping him on his feet. 

“Gods, it worked...it actually worked…” Molly breathed, voice trembling. 

“It did,” Caleb sounded just as stunned, pressing a kiss to the top of his head, “You did it, Molly.”

“Fuck, we have so much work to do…”

Caleb chuckled, “We do. We really, really do but it will be done and we’ll help you every step of the way. Well, perhaps not with planning the coronation, that doesn’t seem like something I’d be good at…”

Molly paused, realising that if today was going to be a day of stunning revelations, they may as well do them all at once. 

“We may need to do the wedding first, actually. If you’re willing.”

Caleb laughed softly, joy lighting up his face, as Molly pulled back to look at him, “Oh. Right. We can do that now, we can actually get married...but why that first? I mean, I’m as eager as you are but wouldn’t it make more sense to crown you and then deal with that?”

Molly’s cheeks flushed and he bit his lip, realising he was about to admit it to himself too as the words left his mouth, as his heart swelled, “Ah, well. We may have...well, we may have a deadline on the wedding, you see. About eight months, I’d guess.”

As he watched the understanding dawn on his lover’s face, the many conflicting and beautiful emotions that flooded his face and dropped his jaw, despite the fear and the uncertainty and the long, hard work ahead of them, Mollymauk had to smile. A wider, truer smile than he’d ever experienced before as everything fell into place. 

Despite everything, they were standing here, together. Despite everything, Caleb Widogast had come home. 

EPILOGUE 

People were starting to throw anxious glances around. Caleb didn’t blame them. The coronation was supposed to begin in less than half an hour and still they were missing a king-to-be. 

Even their friends, up on the dais with him, were starting to frown and look expectantly to the empty throne just behind them. Musicians were waiting and ready to go, lords and ladies had their extravagant outfits and hairstyles starting to wilt in the heat of so many bodies in one room, the priests and priestesses were beginning to look irritated. The entire throne room had been draped in the family colours, flower arrangements spilling their sweet scent into the room to be buoyed along in the heat of the warm summer afternoon and the shifting patterns of coloured light through the stained glass windows. 

Jester had really outdone herself, pulling this all together so quickly. There would be music, dancing, a party that spilled out the palace doors into the entire city. Paper lanterns were already being hung up in the streets ready for when the sun went down, trestle tables carried out ready to be laden with food and drink for all to enjoy, a shared moment to breathe and enjoy the hard work that had been done up until now and prepare for more to follow. Together, all of them, they would welcome a new Asarius. 

If the coronation actually took place of course. 

Even Yasha was frowning now, as Jester put the last finishing touches on the braids in her hair, clearly needing something to do with her nervous energy. 

“Do you know where he is, Caleb?” she asked patiently once Jester had flitted away to rearrange some flowers, coming over to stand beside him. 

Caleb smiled, as unconcerned as he had been this entire time, even as the restlessness had mounted, “Not exactly. But I have an idea.”

“Well, maybe you’d better go and find your husband before he misses his own coronation,” Yasha smiled wryly. 

“He’ll have lost track of time, you know what he’s been like lately,” Caleb hummed fondly but he straightened out his coat and stepped down from the dais. 

There seemed to be a general, quiet noise of satisfaction around the throne room. People seemed to have a lot of faith in his ability to wrangle Mollymauk’s eccentricities, Caleb had noticed. His obvious usefulness had helped silence some of the mutterings about their marriage from the upper classes. 

The rest of the castle was eerily silent, of course, everyone was either in the throne room or enjoying their holiday and the festivities. Caleb whistled as he strolled through the corridors and climbed the stairs, winding his way up to the royal apartments. It wasn’t exactly hard to guess where his husband was, he would be in the same place he’d been for the past few months, whenever he wasn’t working flat out on new decrees and policies or holding court. Or crashed out and snoring in their bed because he’d spent too much time doing everything else and had run himself ragged. 

The was a royal nursery, of course, where both Molly and Jester had spent their childhoods and probably generations before them. But they’d taken one look at it’s distance from their room and, without even needing to glance at each other, dismissed it entirely. So Caleb passed it by, continuing on to their own chambers. They hadn’t moved into the royal suite after the dust had settled, staying in their own rooms. It felt more like home there and the nightmares seemed to find them less. 

Caleb didn’t need to knock, pushing back the door, hearing soft singing as soon as he did. 

“Liebling?” he called softly, grinning, “I’ve covered for you as long as I can but they can’t exactly crown you if you aren’t there?”

Molly was sitting cross legged on the bed in all his finery, their four month old son cradled in his arms, breaking off his song and looking up with an exasperated sigh, “Is it time already?”

Caleb nodded and sat beside him, leaning over and cooing softly to their baby, “Sorry, Trinket, I just need to borrow daddy for a little bit. We’ll come back and get you for the party.”

Every single time he saw their son, he was stuck by how beautiful he was. All soft, lavender skin and wide blue eyes and tiny horns budding through his red curls, a smile he’d only just found and brought out at every moment. No wonder it was so hard to pry Mollymauk away from him, Caleb wasn’t quite sure how he managed it himself. 

“I just don’t like leaving him…” Molly murmured, shifting so Trinket could see both of his fathers, his eyes lighting up and a flurry of giggles leaving his lips as he grasped the air.

Caleb smiled and let him grab hold of one finger, which he immediately tried to put in his mouth, “The nurses can watch him for an hour or two. I imagine they’ve been left feeling like spare parts ever since he was born.”

Molly gave a slightly sheepish smile, “Well. He is our child, I don’t understand why being king doesn’t mean I don’t take care of him.”

“I know, liebling,” Caleb kissed his cheek, “But we really do need to go. Remember? Pretty big important day?”

“I remember,” Molly smiled crookedly, sighing softly and giving Trinket a last kiss before setting him back down in his crib, rocking it gently until he saw his eyes start to close and his breathing start to even out under the blanket he was wrapped in, like he’d only been waiting to know both his fathers were close and watching over him. 

“Ready?” Caleb murmured softly, once Molly had straightened up and brushed down his richly embroidered robes. He did look fantastically beautiful, every inch a king with horns and hands that dripped gemstones, flowing purple silks and his new emblem, a peacock feather, wrought in delicate gold that held the clasp of his cloak. All that he lacked was the crown.

Caleb thought of everything that waited for them in that throne room, the future they were building together, the people that were counting on them, the ups and downs ahead of them, all taking the form of one tarnished gold crown. Everything that had come about just because the two of them had fallen in love with someone they shouldn’t.

“Not really,” Molly chuckled wryly after a moment, “But that’s not exactly stopped us before, has it?” 

“No,” Caleb grinned, “I suppose it hasn’t...shall we?”

**Author's Note:**

> I really hope you guys like this fic! If you do, you are more than welcome to come and talk to me over on my Tumblr, @mollymauk-teafleak! Please also consider leaving a comment, it means so much to authors especially on heavy, multi chapter AUs like this!
> 
> Love you guys <3


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